
PKf„6c>/v 



Class 

Book. _^J 



LITERARY HISTORY 



OF 



ITALY. 



EDINBURGH : 
PKIVTED BY T. CONSTABLE, I. THISTLE STREET. 



COMPENDIUM 






LITERARY HISTORY 



OF 



ITALY, 



UNTIL THE FORMATION OF THE MODERN 
ITALIAN LANGUAGE. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN 



COUNT F. V. BARBACOVI. 




EDINBURG 



THOMAS CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET : 

LONDON, J. B. BA1LLERE ; DUBLIN, MILLIKEN ; OXFORD.. 
TALBOYS ■ CAMBRIDGE, DEIGHTON, NEWBY. 



MDCCCXXXV. 



>r\ 



* 



-v 



PREFATORY NOTES. 



The object attempted to be gained by the 
Translator of the following pages has solely 
been to enjoy a share, however slight that 
might be, in the merit of opening another 
source of acquaintance with the history of 
a literature which, whether in its ancient or 
modern forms, has ever stood the very highest 
object of admiration to the w 7 hole civilised 
world. 

And in pursuance of this design, he has 
deemed that the translation of a work of high 
literary value, of a form not extended enough 
to fatigue its reader, nor contracted enough 
to dissatisfy him, is a labor which will not 
go altogether unrewarded. 



In the course of some Prefatory Remarks 
by the editors of the Italian Edition (Milan, 
1825), they notice, after an observation on 
the high literary reputation enjoyed by the 
author of this Work, that it is more pecu- 
liarly to be considered as a masterly Com- 
pendium or Abridgement of the early part 
of the great historical work by Tiraboschi 
on Italian Literature, as the corresponding 
labor of Maffei has been of its later portion. 
They also comment upon its value as em- 
bracing the literary history of a period equal 
to seventeen centuries in duration, closing 
with the eleventh age of the Christian era ; 
and conclude in the happy remark of Cicero, 
that 

Nihil in Historia est pura et illustri brevitate dulcius. 



The Preface by Barbacovi is almost ex- 
clusively occupied in remarks upon the great 
work of Tiraboschi, and by a modest exposi- 



Vll 



tion of the motives which induced him to 
undertake his own, and these are asserted 
to be an anxiety to secure for his country 
the advantage of its literary history in a more 
suitable and convenient form, as well as a 
hope to excite to the study of the literary 
history and glory 

* . * * * * j) e j bel paese 

Che Appennin parte e '1 mar circonda e l'Alpe. 



Though the essential spirit and matter of 
the original have been preserved throughout. 
in its form it has been partially altered, by the 
adoption of a different mode of division, while 
a few notes only, distinguished by marks of 
their own, and principally confined to the 
trifling additions of dates and particulars 
omitted in the original, have been added by 
the Translator, to the exclusion of several of 
greater length, gathered from corresponding 
works on literarv history in German, French, 
and Italian literature, but which he after- 
wards found inconsistent with the limits of 
the work. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Section 1 . Literature of Magna Grecia and Sicily, 1 

2. The Literature of Ancient Rome, from 
the Sixth Century subsequent to its 
Foundation, to the Seventh.and Eighth, 13 

3. The Literature of Ancient Rome and of 
Italy, continued, . . . . 23 

4. The Same, continued to the- Death of 
Augustus, . . . . . 57 

5. The Literature of Italy, from the Epoch 

of Augustus to that of Adrian, . 80 

6. Continuation of the preceding Section, 1 05 

7. The Literature of Italy, from the Epoch 

of Adrian to that of Constantine, 138 

8. The Literature of Italy, from the Epoch 

of Constantine till the Fall of the Ro- 
man Empire in the West, . . 162 

9. The Literature of Italy under the Do- 
minion of the Goths, and until the For- 
mation of the (Modern) Italian Lan- 
guage, 186 



INTRODUCTION. 



It is unnecessary to speak here of the literature 
of the ancient Etruscan nation, of a people which 
possessed an extended empire in Italy ere the 
Romans had a name, as although it might produce 
its learned men, and those versed in the sciences 
and arts, no literary work, nor monument of them, 
has descended to our times, since the Greek and 
Latin authors alone furnish testimony to the Etruscan 
excellence in the arts and sciences. Italian litera- 
ture more properly dates from the rise of those 
of Magna Grecia and Sicily, as of them we find that 
precious memorials are yet extant ; but in noticing 
them here we shall employ that briefness which 
suits the nature of a compendium such as this. The 
term Magna Grecia was applied to that district of 
Italy which now forms part of the kingdom of 
Naples, and which a narrow arm of the sea alone 
separates from Sicily. The vicinity of the two 
countries naturally introduced a reciprocal commu- 
nication of the sciences and letters ; and both may 



XI 1 INTRODUCTION. 

be spoken of conjunctly here. It is true, that with 
respect to Magna Grecia, properly so called, it was 
taken possession of by many Greek colonies, who, 
driving out its previous inhabitants in making them- 
selves masters of the country, bestowed upon it the 
name of their own, but, as Tiraboschi reasonably 
observes, in writing the literary history of a country 
it becomes necessary to include that of the letters 
and learned men who florished there, as well as to 
give them that country's name, whatever might be 
the region from which their ancestors had arrived ; 
and therefore it is justifiable to notice, as belonging 
to this subject, the sciences and studies of a people 
which, though foreign in its origin, occupied part of 
Italy, and by a continued residence there becomes 
entitled to assume the Italian name. 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



SECTION I. 

LITERATURE OF MAGNA GRECIA AND SICILY. 

The Literary History of Magna Grecia and Sicily 
may be best commenced by a notice of their earliest 
schools of philosophy, as both countries displayed an 
equal ardor for its cultivation. Pythagoras, though 
not born in Italy, spent there a long portion of his life, 
founding the celebrated Pythagorean or Italic school, a 
in which all the sciences which tend to perfect the 
human mind were attempted to be cultivated. Cro- 
tona and Metapontum were the two cities in 
which he made the longest residence, but many of 
the neighbouring states or cities, on both sides the 
Faro, enjoyed the benefit of his knowledge and coun- 
sels in the regulation of their civil or political 
government. Pythagoras was the first, as Cicero 
asserts, to assume the title of Philosopher, and 
one of the earliest to open up new methods of 
thought in the study of the moral and mathemati- 

a Foundation of the Italic School (about) 540 b.c. 60th Olympiad. 

A 



1 LITERARY HISTORY. 

oil sciences, while in pointing out to others the 
system he had adopted, and inviting them to fol- 
low in his footsteps, he studied to awake among 
all an ardent passion for virtue and knowledge. 
Thales the Milesian, founder of the Ionic sect, 
lived indeed previous to Pythagoras, but the latter 
possessed a higher name and reputation with the 
ancient philosophers. The list of writers is long 
who have treated of the investigations and disco- 
veries attributed to Pythagoras, relative to philoso- 
phy in general, arithmetic, music, geometry, astro- 
nomy, moral and medical science, and natural the- 
ology ; while Italy may be permitted the boast, that 
many of the opinions and discoveries of modern 
philosophy drew their origin from the speculations 
of her earliest philosophers. The astronomical system 
of Copernicus even is found partly developed in that 
of Pythagoras, together with the theory of the revo- 
lution of the earth round the sun or common centre, 
and that of the existence of animal being in all the 
planets. Cicero, indeed, on the authority of Theo- 
phrastus makes Icetas of Syracuse the discoverer of 
the terrestrial motion, but the latter being Italian 
by birth, the glory of having possessed, from the re- 
motest period, the knowledge of a system destined, 
at a later day, to receive so luminous a confirmation 
from modern science, must be conceded Italy. 
From what has been just asserted it may be con- 



PHILOSOPHY. -J 

ceived how highly the sciences flourished in Italy 
at a period when all Europe, Greece alone excepted, 
lay buried in the total darkness of ignorance and 
barbarism. Many of the followers of Pythagoras, 
in holding public schools of philosophy, maintained 
the knowledge, and diffused the opinions he had 
inculcated. The most illustrious amongst these 
were Empedocles of Agrigentum in Sicily ; Epichar- 
mus ; Ocellus, native of Lucania ; Timaeus of Locri, 
held by Plato in high esteem; Architas of Tarentum, 
and several others. Another school of philosophy 
founded by the celebrated Xenophanes, and, from 
the residence of its founder at Elea, denominated 
the Eleatic, a now arose, but if almost all the sciences 
were cultivated thus early and ardently in Italy, it 
was there also that its earliest abuses or corruptions 
had their birth. Dicaearchus, a native of Messina, 
celebrated for his high talent, and whom Cicero 
hesitated not to call a " gTeat and wonderful inan, r 
by an unhappy perversion of his knowledge sus- 
tained the doctrine of the material union of the soul 
and body, and consequent mortality of both.* Some 

* Dicaearcus autem Pberecratem quemdam disserentem inducit 
nihil esse omnino animum, et hoc esse nomen totum inane : frus- 
traque aninialia et animantes appellari ; neque in homine inesse 
animum vel animam, nee in bestia vimque omnem earn, qua vel 
agamus quid, vel sentiamus, in omnibus corporibus vivis acquabiliter 
esse fusam Cicero Tuscul. Quaes, lib. 1, Num. 152. 

a Foundation of the Eleatic School (about) 530 B.C. 



4 LITERARY HISTORY. 

of our modern speculators cannot then claim having 
first asserted these doctrines, as we here find the 
proofs of their very high antiquity; but we need 
only place in opposition to such names those of many 
much more illustrious philosophers, such as Plato, 
Socrates, &c, who strongly inculcated the doctrine 
of the immortality of the soul. 

At this period also, the medical as well as musi- 
cal arts, were found to flourish in Sicily, as Tirabos- 
chi* sufficiently proves, but mathematical science 
was particularly and successfully cultivated. In 
this, Architas of Tarentum, already named, and 
Archimedes a of Syracuse, rendered themselves pre- 
eminently illustrious. The reputation of the former 
was, indeed, sufficiently extended to induce Plato 
even to desire the benefit of his instructions, and 
he has the merit of having been the first to re- 
duce geometry to practical purposes, and to form 
determinate laws for the mechanical arts ; but the 
name of Archimedes, one of the greatest minds 
that ever cultivated the mathematical sciences, 
arrests more strongly our attention. Among the 
many eulogies passed on him that by the celebrated 
Leibnitz may be cited ;*f* and the justice of this 

* Storia della Lett. Ital. vol 1. c. 1. 

•f Qui Archimedem intelliget recentiorum summorum virorum 
inventa parciu3 mirabitur. 

a Archimedes florished (about) 250 b.c. 



PHILOSOPHY. 



panegyric is amply proved not only by the testimo- 
nies of the various writers of his life, but also by 
that which the part of his works that have reached 
us, afford.* The study of mathematics, mechanics, 
and geometry, engrossed exclusively, it would ap- 
pear, the attention and affection of Archimedes; 
and though mechanics owe no less to him than 
geometry, of the latter science he may be truly con- 
sidered the inventor. Of the many practical ap- 
plications which the fertile and creative genius of 
Archimedes enabled him to make of his deep mecha- 
nical knowledge, several have been handed down 
to us in the relations of his biographers. His last 
days were devoted to the exercise of his vast know- 
ledge and deep skill in the defence of his native city 
against the attacks of its Roman besiegers, when, 
by a series of wonderful mechanical inventions, he 
assisted in retarding the period of its fall. The 
day, however, on which the besieging army achieved 
its successful assault on Syracuse proved fatal also 
to its illustrious citizen, as he perished by the brutal 
hands of a common soldier, to the deep regret of 
the Roman general even. 

We have now given some of the great names 
which Sicily and Magna Grecia produced in the 

* Among the works which treat of Archimedes that by the cele- 
brated Count G. Marruchelli is, in particular, worthy of perusal. 
Life of Archimedes Brescia, 1737— Barbacovi. 



LITERARY HISTORY. 

philosophic and mathematical sciences, and shall 
now speak of those eminent in political science. 
In legislation, also, it may be affirmed that Italy 
preceded the other nations, as the Locrians in 
Magna Grecia were the first people in Europe who 
possessed written laws ; and their citizen, the cele- 
brated Zaleucus, was their earliest legislator. Za- 
leucus a appeared prior to Solon or Lycurgus ; and 
from what w r e read in the pages of Diodorus Siculus, 
his excellence as a legislator cannot be disputed. 
He commenced by exacting from his fellow-citizens 
that above every other thing they should have a 
firm belief in the existence of the gods, and that by 
directing their regards and thoughts to the heavens, 
and considering their wonderful structure and dispo- 
sition, they should be enabled to discover the im- 
possibility of these having been the result of fortui- 
tous arrangement or human foresight, deducing 
thence the respect and honor due to the deities 
from whom every benefit and felicity were derived. 
He insisted also on the necessity of purifying the 
mind from every vice, as it was not so much by 
sacrifice or offering as by the honest and upright walk 
of life that Heaven was to be propitiated. Among 
the most famous in the list of these ancient legis- 
lators appears Charondas h of Catania, in Sicily, or, 

a Zaleucus legislated from 800 to 700 b.c. 
*> Charondas legislated from 700 to 600 b.c. 



POETRY. 



according to other authorities, of Thurium in Magna 
Grecia. He was selected by the people of the 
latter place to draw up a code of laws for that city, 
and its excellence may be inferred from the fact of its 
adoption by some of the neighbouring states, both in 
Sicily and Magna Grecia. One of the most remark- 
able provisions in the regulations of Charondas was 
that by which all the sons of citizens were required to 
study the Belles Lettres or polite literature, and that 
for this purpose the state should maintain public 
teachers at due salaries, affording thus the earliest 
example which history presents of schools of instruc- 
tion for public benefit supported by the state. 

Many other legislators, also, florished in these 
provinces of Italy, whose names, however, and those 
of the people for whom they legislated, have alone 
descended to us. 

If such were the excellence to which Italy had 
attained at the remotest times in the severer sciences, 
she claimed a not less honourable distinction in or- 
namental literature. It was in Sicily, it is known, 
that pastoral poetry took its rise ; and Stesichorus,* 
a native of Imera, in that island is alleged to have 
been its earliest cultivator. Stesichorus is likewise 
eminent as a lyric poet ; and his countrymen testi- 
fied their esteem for his talents by the erection of a 

a Stesichorus florished (about) 600 b.c. 



8 LITERARY HISTORY. 

statue to his honor in their city, as Cicero relates,* 
while the people of Catania, where he died, raised a 
mausoleum to his memory. It may be considered 
a better proof of the excellence of Stesichorus as a 
poet that Cicero eulogises him ; and Dionysius 
Halicarnasseus hesitates not to place him in a rank 
equal with, if not higher than Pindar or Simonides. 
Besides taking its rise in Sicily, pastoral poetry was 
there also brought to that highest grade of excellence 
to which it ever could ascend. Syracuse produced 
both Theocritus a and Moschus, the former of whom 
was taken by Virgil as a model in this branch of 
poetry. - )* Posterior to Theocritus we find Moschus 
equally celebrated, and by many, indeed, preferred 
to him. The poetry of the theatre also florished 
in Sicily ; and Epicharmus,*> whose name has been 
already given, and whom Plato places first among 
comedians, may not only be considered the inventor 
of comedy, but the writer also whose productions 
tended principally to perfect it, as the words in the 
epigram of Theocritus testify, — 

* Lib. ii. in Ver. Num. 35. 

•f A very elegant translation, in Latin verse, of some of the Idylls 
of Theocritus has been given to Italy by the celebrated Raymond 
Cunich Barbacovi. 

a Theocritus florished (about) 250 b.c. 
i> Epicharmus florished (about) 450 b.c. 



ELOQUENCE. 

But Eloquence, or the oratorical art, owed to 
Sicily, perhaps in a greater degree than Poetry even, 
its origin and the subsequent splendor it attained. 
Aristotle and Cicero join their testimonies here, at- 
tributing the merits to Corax of Syracuse and his 
pupil Tisias. But the highest rank in oratory was 
reached by Lysias a of Syracuse and Gorgias of Le- 
ontium ; the former of whom is called by Cicero* a 
most eloquent and elegant writer, while Dionysius 
Halicarnasseus asserts, that he eclipsed the fame of 
all preceding orators. We still possess a part of his 
Orations, though the greater number have perished. *f* 
Gorgias b attained, however, an equal if not higher 
reputation than Lysias. He long held a school of 
rhetoric at Athens, where, according to the state- 
ment of his countryman, Diodorus, he so far sur- 
passed the other rhetoricians of his time in the sub- 
tility of his reasonings, the depth of his study, and 
the greatness of his eloquence, as to receive the 
highest price then ever known to have been given 



* De Orat. lib. 3. nom. 7, 

-j- With regard to Lysias, the life which J. Taylor, after Plutarch, 
has written of him, and prefixed to his edition of the Orations or 
that orator, published at London 1739, particularly merits being 
read Barbacovi. 

a Lysias florished (about) 400 B.C. 
b Gorgias florished (about) 450 b.c. 



10 LITERARY HISTORY. 

for instruction in the art.* This celebrated sophist 
attracted the attention and received the support not 
only of the more youthful students of rhetoric, but 
that also of some of the most eminent men of the 
age, such as Thucidides and Pericles, both already 
advanced in years ; and Dionysius speaks of him as 
"a great and wonderful orator. " The people of 
Leontium, grateful for the honor which the talents 
of Gorgias had conferred on his native city, struck a 
medal to his name ;*f* but a more splendid monument 
of his fame was the statue of gold decreed him during 
his lifetime in the temple of the Delphian Apollo. f 
It is certainly a proud boast to Italy, that the two 
orators just spoken of were the first to teach to 
Greece the art of eloquence, and that it was upon 
their precepts and examples that a Socrates, a De- 
mosthenes, and so many of the other great orators 
who followed, were formed. 

Of the many historical writers that ancient Sicily 

* One hundred mine ; as one mina appears to have been equal 
to £3, 4s, 7d, the sum mentioned, therefore, may be calculated at 
£323, sterling, — Translator. 

-f- This medal has been published in the second volume of the 
" British Museum," — Barbacovi. 

$ Pausanias, contrary to the authority of Cicero and every other 
author, asserts that this statue was only gilt. The words of Cicero, 
relative to Gorgias, however, are " tantus honos habitus est a Gne- 
cia, soli ut ex omnibus Delphis non inaurata statua, sed aurea sta- 
tueretur.'' — Lib. 3. De Orat. No. 154 Barbacovi. 



FINE ARTS. 11 

produced, we find an ample list in the pages of Dio- 
dorus, but, with the exception alone of fifteen of the 
forty books of history by that author, written in a 
style elegant and refined, and at the same time sim- 
ple and clear, their works have unfortunately been 
lost to us. 

We may judge, then, from what has been hither- 
to said, of the highly florishing condition of the 
sciences and letters which distinguished ancient Si- 
cily and that part of Italy named Magna Grecia, 
but we have yet to speak of the excellence attained 
there in the fine arts. The magnificent architectural 
works erected at an early period in Sicily, and am- 
ply described by Diodorus, have ever been famous ; 
while pre-eminent amid these, in unequalled gran- 
deur of proportion and magnificence of form, stood 
at Agrigentum the temple of the Olympian Jupiter. 
Similar in character and beauty to those of Sicily, 
many public buildings were found in Southern Italy, 
as the splendid ruins of the three temples of Pestum 
or Possidonia, and some of the fabrics now laid open 
in the disentombed cities of Pompeii and Hercula- 
neum yet attest. As to sculpture, we find from 
Pausanias that many eminent artists florished both 
in Sicily and Magna Grecia, and he notices them at 
length. In painting, though fewer remains neces- 
sarily reach us than of objects in the sister arts, yet 
we have sufficient to prove, from the researches of 



12 LITERARY HISTORY. 

Tiraboschi,* the high degree of excellence it had 
reached. This happy progress in the arts, sciences, 
and Belles Lettres, owed its origin to the character 
itself and lively genius of the people of the countries 
whose literary history we have just sketched, and 
not to the patronage or munificence of any sovereign 
whatever ; since Southern Italy was alwaj s divided 
into many small and separate republics, and Sicily 
long possessed a republican form of government ; but 
to animate and carry forward the arts and sciences 
to that high perfection asserted of them, the ap- 
plauses and honors conferred by the several states 
on their more illustrious citizens, together with the 
monuments erected to perpetuate their names, were 
found sufficiently powerful. 

From the literature of ancient Sicily and Magna 
Grecia, we shall now proceed to that of ancient 
Rome and the other provinces of Italy. 

* Stoiiadella. Lett. Ital. lib. 1. c. 2. 



13 



SECTION II. 

THE LITERATURE OF ANCIENT ROME FROM THE SIXTH CEN- 
TURY SUBSEQUENT TO ITS FOUNDATION, TO THE SEVENTH 
AND EIGHTH. 

The first five centuries which followed the found- 
ation of Rome, found the Roman people too exclu- 
sively occupied in wars of aggression or defence 
against the neighbouring states, to permit it to as- 
pire to anything beyond conquest and military glory. 
Toward the close of the fifth century from that pe- 
riod, however, the conquest effected of Magna Gre- 
cia and Sicily, opened to the Romans sources of 
acquaintance with letters, such as they had never 
previously possessed; the constant and increasing 
intercourse with the conquered people ; the popula- 
rity that the poetry of the latter acquired among 
them ; the pleasure they found in frequenting their 
theatres ; the honors they saw conferred upon 
their poets, ought necessarily to have excited in the 
Roman mind a taste for literature hitherto unfelt ; 
the establishment of the theatre, and taste for poe- 
try, must be dated from that period, while the in- 
troduction of dramatic poetry commenced with Li- 



14 LITERARY HISTORY. 

vius Andronicus, Nevius, and Ennius, a whose com- 
positions were however but the comparatively rude 
and unadorned efforts of the early muse, unworthy 
of the study of succeeding authors ; Ennius was 
indeed honored by the patronage and friendship of 
the elder Scipio, one of the most celebrated captains, 
as well as accomplished scholars, of the age, who 
retained him at his side even in the midst of his 
campaigns; and distinguished by the noble title 
of the " Father of Latin Song," and of the epic 
poem in particular ; but from the fragments that 
have descended to us, his writings must be charac- 
terised as partaking largely of the rudeness of the 
period. His literary character has been happily 
described by Ovid, in the line — 

Ennius ingenio maximus, arte rudis. 

For us Roman literature properly commences 
with Plautus and Terentius, from their works alone 
having descended to our times, and the influence 
they possessed on the actual state of letters. Plau- 
tus, 15 born at Sarsina in Umbria, composed many 
comedies, of which twenty have been preserved ; 
but the opinions of both ancient and modern authors 
on their merits have been various and contradictory. 
Cicero extols the wit, humor, and elegance of 

a Ennius florished from 515 to 585 a.r. 
b Plautus florished (about) 550 a.r. 



POETRY. k) 

Plautus ; * Horace, on the contrary, condemns him.-f* 
Tiraboschi ingeniously reconciles these contending 
opinions, by advancing that Plautus has certainly a 
style at once graceful, natural, and facetious, and is 
to be considered as a vivid and lively painter of the 
manners of his country, but too frequently disfigured 
by an intermixture of coarseness, sinking occasion- 
ally even into obscenity. 

Several other writers of comedy are mentioned 
by Cicero,| and Quintilian,§ as florishing in the 
sixth century of Rome, but of these the works of 
Terence* alone are yet extant. This celebrated wri- 
ter, a Carthaginian by birth, acquired the Latin 
language and style by a residence in Rome, and 
composed there six comedies, which were repre- 
sented with the highest success on the Roman stage 5 
from the year 587 of Rome to 593. Modern cri- 
tics vary also in their judgments on the merits of 
Terence ; but the opinions of Cicero and Caesar may 

* De Offic. lib. i. num. 29. 

•j* In his Art of Poetry — 

At nostri proavi plautinos et numeros et 
Lauderere sales nimium patientur utrumque, 
Xe dicam stulte mirati si modo ego et vos 
Scimus inurbanum lepido seponere dicto, 
Legitimumque sonum digitis calamus et arte. 

J De Clar. Orat. num. 45. 

§ Lib. x. c. 1. 

■ Terence fiorished (about) 590 a.r. 



16 LITERARY HISTORY. 

be preferred. Both extol highly the purity of his 
Latin, the sweetness of his style, and close approxi- 
mation to many of the beauties of the Greek poet 
Menander. Caesar, indeed, slightly qualifies his 
encomium by desiring in our author a greater 
strength of sentiment. Thus the Latin language 
and its poetry advanced mutually to perfection in 
the sixth, and commencement of the seventh ages of 
Rome. It must be confessed, however, that the 
Romans had not yet nearly reached the poetic ex- 
cellence of the Greeks. If poetry had now taken 
root among the former, and its students found their 
labors appreciated and rewarded, the art was not held 
in honor sufficient to induce Roman talent to devote 
itself exclusively to its study, and one of the causes 
of this may be traced in the idea entertained by the 
Romans of that day, that it was more properly a 
mere mental recreation that a conquered people 
might well present unto their conquerors. But the 
period now .approached in which it was to be held 
in greater honor, and consequently brought nearer 
its perfection ; we shall, however, proceed at pre- 
sent to examine the state in which philosophy, and 
the other sciences and letters were found in Rome 
at that age. 

The study of philosophy may be said to have 
been introduced into Rome by the arrival there of 
many of the learned men of Greece in 586, a. r. 



PHILOSOPHY. 17 

After the defeat and capture of Perseus, King of 
Macedonia, who accompanied in chains the trium- 
phal car of his conqueror, Paulus Emilius, into 
Rome, the Roman senate ordered the transportation 
thither of many of those Greeks, who, though sub- 
ject to their empire, had favored the cause of the 
Macedonian monarch, in the view of their trial and 
probable condemnation. Not a few of those were 
persons distinguished for their learning, and fore- 
most among them were the celebrated historian Po- 
lybius, and the philosopher Panaetius. Of these, 
Polybius principally contributed to excite a spirit 
for the study of the sciences and letters ; it was 
from intercourse with him that the younger Scipio 
(Africanus) acquired those tastes which afterwards 
rendered him as illustrious in literary as in military 
reputation. Cicero assures us that Scipio made the 
works of Xenophon his continual study, and that, 
besides that of Polybius, he enjoyed the friendship 
of several of the most eminent of his countrymen 
then in Rome. Equal praise is due Caius Lelius, 
the faithful friend and companion of Scipio, who 
likewise sought the friendship of the Greek philo- 
sophers, and similarly also applied himself with 
ardor to the study of letters. Many other noble 
Romans followed these examples, and assisted to 
destroy the previous impression, that it was from 



18 LITERARY HISTORY. 

military talent alone that fame or immortality could 
be acquired. 

Another event occurred six years after the arrival 
of the Greek philosophers in Rome, which further 
tended materially to promote the study of the sci- 
ences. The Athenians, on account of an attack 
made by them on the city of Oropus, in Boeotia, 
had been condemned by the Roman senate to pay 
a fine of 500 talents. To obtain a diminution of 
so heavy an impost, an embassy composed of three 
of the most celebrated philosophers and orators of 
Greece, Carneades, Diogenes, and Critolaus, was 
dispatched by the Athenians to Rome in 598. a. r. 
Having exposed the object of their mission to 
the Senate, the philosophers finding themselves 
obliged to await the determination of that body, 
employed their leisure in the display of their elo- 
quence and knowledge in public disputations on 
various arguments. Carneades here distinguished 
himself particularly ; of him Cicero asserts, that 
possessing an incredible force in reasoning, there was 
nothing that he ever undertook to sustain in his 
harangues of which he did not persuade, nor any- 
thing to combat which he did not overthrow. An 
eloquence then previously unheard in Rome, ne- 
cessarily called forth universal admiration and ap- 
plause, while it caused the general attention to be 



PHILOSOPHY. 10 

directed to this philosopher and his associates ; the 
Roman youth eagerly crowded to listen to a grace 
of oratory and force of persuasion that delighted it, 
whilst the philosopher insinuating himself with ad- 
mirable art into the minds of his hearers, succeeded 
in raising a passion for the sciences sufficiently strong 
to cause the abandonment of all other pleasures or 
pursuits for the study of philosophy. The crowded 
concourse, attracted from every part to the disputa- 
tions of these rhetoricians, and the applause bestowed 
upon them, excited, however, the severe displeasure 
of Cato the censor. He dreaded, as Plutarch says, 
the influence such studies would have in causing a 
preference of science to arms in the Roman youth. 
Strongly advocating in the Senate, then, the imme- 
diate arrangement of the matter which had brought 
the Athenian ambassadors to Rome, he pointed out 
at the same time the dangers he anticipated from 
their residence there. To facilitate their departure, 
the fine imposed was reduced to 100 talents only, 
and they returned to Athens highly gratified by the 
success of their mission. The taste for philosophy 
and literature, however, awakened by these philo- 
sophers, departed not with them ; Panaetius and 
Polybius, too, remained in Rome, besides probably 
several others of their learned countrymen. The 
sect of the Stoics, to which Panaetius belonged, had 
a larger number of followers than any of the others 



20 LITERARY HISTORY. 

into which the schools of Rome were divided ; but 
to whatever sect it might be that the Roman philo- 
sophers attached themselves, their studies were 
more peculiarly directed to moral and political than 
to natural and physical questions, as the former 
were judged more useful not only for the determi- 
nation of the private duties of the citizen, but for 
guidance in the civil and political government of the 
state. 

Cicero, in his work, De Claris Oratoribus, 
has given us the history of the happy progress of 
oratory in Rome. He bestows the highest praise 
in his strictures on this art, on Cato the censor, — 
"who," says he, "more powerful than he in con- 
ferring praise ? who more ingenious in ideas ? more 
subtile in the argument as in the exposition of a 
cause ?"* His orations, 150 of which he asserts 
having studied, are described as abounding in mag- 
nificent expressions, displaying in fact all the excel- 
lencies proper to an orator. Sergius Galba and the 
two illustrious friends, Scipio and Lelius, receive 
equally the highest encomiums. In the long and 
varied list of names commented on by Cicero, we 
find that of M. Emilius Lepidus extolled as adding 
new features of grace and ornament to Latin elo- 
quence, rendering it more harmonious by the imita- 

* Declar. Orat. No. 17. 



HISTORY. 21 

tion of Grecian models. Eloquence we find thus 
D actually advancing to its perfection, materially 
assisted in its progress by the advantages it was 
found to secure those public men who sought to 
obtain the highest offices of the Republic. The 
decisions of the state on all the most important 
questions of peace or war, legislation or civil and 
criminal procedure, depended in great part on the 
talents and eloquence of the orators. 

In historical writing, the praise or notice due the 
Roman authors of that period is but slight. The 
study of eloquence we have spoken of, was not 
brought to the service of this branch of literature, 
but adopted solely for the purposes of the Senate 
and the Forum. Cicero, however, gives us the 
names of many writers who have treated of history, 
but excepts that of Cato a alone from the tone of 
general condemnation. Cato, directing his admira- 
ble genius to this study also, composed seven books 
of history, entitled De Originibiis, on which Cicero 
passes a high encomium, applying to them the terms 
" eloquent" aud " beautiful." Of Cato we may add, 
that he wrote on several subjects previously un- 
touched by Roman writers, such as on agriculture, 
in his work De Re Rustica ; on military discipline 
and the rhetorical art, together with some commen- 

- Cato born 520 a.r. 



22 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



taries on jurisprudence, which have shared the fate 
of the greater part of his other works. " M. Portius 
Cato," says T. Livy* in his glowing eulogium on 
that writer, " surpassed by a great way all the most 
illustrious both of Patricians and Plebeians. Some 
reach the highest honors by the study of the laws, 
some by eloquence, and others by military reputa- 
tion, but the genius of Cato was so adapted to every 
art, as to seem born only for that to which at the 
moment it devoted itself. Valiant in the field of 
battle, and celebrated for many important victories, 
he was at once a great general, a most able lawyer, 
and most eloquent orator." The progress of the 
other sciences would naturally introduce the study 
of jurisprudence. Among the first jurisconsults of 
this age, we find again the name of the great Cato 
just spoken of; that of M. Junius Brutus, and that 
of Q. Mutius Scoevola ; the one of whom composed 
seven, and the other ten books on Jurisprudence, 
none of which are however now extant. But we 
shall now turn to a yet more luminous epoch in the 
literary history of Rome — the seventh and eighth 
centuries. 

* Hist. Lib. 39. c. 2. 



23 



SECTION III. 

THE LITERATURE OF ANCIENT ROME AND OF ITALY 
CONTINUED. 

The consequences produced on Roman literature 
and philosophy by the conquest of Greece, have 
been already adverted to — the lines of Horace are 
well known. 

Graecia capta ferrum victorem cepit et artes, 
Intulit agresti Latio.* 

To Greece was Rome indebted for the masters who 
introduced the sciences and Belles Lettres into her 
walls ; to Greece all Italy turned for her artists 
and instructors ; altogether Grecian, in fine, was the 
spirit of Roman literature. To that hallowed seat 
of the sciences and letters, w r e find successively re- 
pairing all those scholars of Rome who were ambi- 
tious of penetrating deeply into the various branches 
of knowledge ; and the results of this intercourse 
are found first in the happy imitation, and subsequent - 

* Lib. ii. Ep. 1. 



24 LITERARY HISTORY. 

ly in the equality attained by the Roman writers to 
their Grecian models ; and at a later era, in their 
even surpassing these in some departments of liter- 
ature. Commencing with the poetry of this period, 
we find C. Lucilius introducing a new species of 
poetical composition, in hexameter verse, of which 
Grecian literature furnished no example, viz: Satire, 
a species of composition destined afterwards to ren- 
der celebrated the names of Perseus, Juvenal, and 
Horace. The Eusebeian Chronicle places the date 
of the birth of Lucilius in the year 605 of Rome, 
and that of his death in 657. Horace, who speaks 
at length of this writer,* describes his satires as 
bitter and unsparing in their spirit, though their 
author enjoyed the friendship of the most consider- 
able personages in Rome ; his style he considers not 
sufficiently polished, and his verses wanting in that 
correction which his habit of quick composition and 
insufferance of fatigue permitted him not to bestow 
upon them ; but Quintilian, who, if he equalled not 
in style the first writers of his country, shows him- 
self finely acquainted with its theory, censuring, on 
the contrary, these strictures of Horace, eulogises 
the style of the satiric poet.-f* We are not now 
qualified to pronounce upon the merits of this ques- 



* Lib. i. Sat. 4 and .5. f Instit. Orat. Lib. x. c. 1. 



POETRY. 25 

lion, since of the thirty books of satire by this wri- 
ter, a few fragments are alone extant. 

Latin poetry found a higher ornament in S. Lu- 
cretius Cams. He was born, according to the Euse- 
biean Chronicle, in a. r. 658, and died by the ac- 
count of some, in his 40th, by that of others, in his 
44th year. The work of this author, entitled " De 
Rerum Natura" which is yet extant, has rendered 
his name immortal, and his merit is placed in a yet 
stronger light, when we consider him as the first 
among the writers of his country, to treat in verse 
of a philosophic system, as his own lines at the 
commencement of the fourth book boast.* Lu- 
cretius was unquestionably the first to bring the 
fancies, ornaments, graces, and sublimity of poetry, 
to the service of didactic and philosophic writing, 
and in the ground thus occupied has found no rival 
even among the poets of Greece. Hence, Ovid 
says,— 

Carmina divini tunc sunt moritura Lucreti, 
Exitio terraecum dabit una dies.-f- 

It is only to be lamented that Lucretius has un- 

* A via Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante 
Trita solo : juvat integros accedere fontes 
Atque haurire, juvatque novos decerpere flores, 
Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam, 
Unde prius nulli vellarint tempora Musa?. 
f Lib. Amor. El. 15. 

B 



26 LITERARY HISTORY. 

dertaken to display a system, the Epicurean, the 
lowest of all in its moral tone ; in which, besides 
the denial of a Divine Providence, in the pleasures 
of this life human felicity is sought for alone. It 
must be confessed, indeed, that we find scattered 
through his pages the very best maxims and moral 
principles, but these avail but little when the founda- 
tion of all, religion, is undermined, Without the 
belief of a Deity to reward the virtuous, and punish 
the vicious, in a future life, true happiness, or any 
enduring society among men can never exist ; whence 
they who labor to overthrow religion, as Cicero well 
observes, attempt the destruction of all human soci- 
ety. We possess many editions of Lucretius, and 
have likewise several translations of his work into 
the modern languages ; of these, the very elegant 
Italian version, in blank verse, by the celebrated 
Marchetti, * is to be considered the most successful. 
Following the order of time, we arrive at the 
name of Cicero, who, ambitious of distinction as a 
poet also, undertook at an early age a versified 



* A. Marchc-tti was bom at Pantormo, in Tuscany, in 1633, of 
a distinguished family, and died 1714. He was professor of ma- 
thematics in Pisa, and composed many learned works ; in his trans- 
lation of Lucretius, a stricter attention to religion and morality 
should have been desired, along with a less prominent display of 
the more dangerous and seducing passages of his author, or at least 
some commentary to counteract their tendency. Barbacovi. 



POETRY. 27 

translation of the Greek poem of Aratus, on Astro- 
nomy, besides one of the " Prognostics" of the 
same author. An epic poem, on the life of Marios, 
and one of greater length, divided into three books, 
on the events of his own consulship, with a few 
pieces of minor importance, complete the list of hia 
poetic efforts. The few verses of these works which 
have been preserved to us, may be considered as 
almost equal to any within the range of Latin poe- 
try, should we except those of Virgil from the com- 
parison ; and modern critics of authority have ex- 
tolled the poetic worth of Cicero. He, however, 
requires not to be invested with any crown in poetry, 
as one greater and more splendid, that of eloquence 
and philosophy, binds gloriously his brow. % 

The learned Varro ought also to be noticed among 
the poets of this time, as he, in addition to his many 
other celebrated works, composed a number of satires 
of mixed prose and poetry in various metres, entitled 
Menippean, from Menippus, a Greek lyric poet, 
who first set the example in this species of com- 
position. 

Julius Caesar, also, in the midst of the tumults of 
war, composed a poem while on a journey from 
Rome to Spain. A tragedy of his, too, is mentioned 
by Suetonius as the production of his early age. But 
as all those works have been destroyed by the in- 
juries of time, we shall proceed to speak of these 



LITERARY HISTORY. 

that are yet extant, commencing with the poetry of 
Catullus. C. Valerius Catullus was born, not at 
Sirmione, as has been asserted, but in Verona itself, 
as has been proved by Maftei,* who adds several 
notices of his family and condition. He was the 
first of the Latin poets to adopt the great variety of 
measures we find employed in his pages ; and many 
of these were probably first introduced by himself. 
From the grace and beauty of his style he is pointed 
to as a fine model of poetic elegance ; and Ovid 
acquaints us with his opinion of his merits in one 
simple line, — 

" Mantua Virgilio gaudet, Verona Catullo.*"-f- 

And Martial — 

Tantum magna suo debet Verona CatuIIo, 
Quantum parva suo Mantua Virgilio. J 

We may remark, however, on these lines, that 
though Mantua may be admitted inferior to Verona, 
the expression poor is unjustly applied by the poet 
to the former ; and its fame, as the birth-place of 
Virgil, is undoubtedly higher than that of Verona 
for having given birth to Catullus. 

The three great poets, Tibullus, Horace, and 
Virgil, introduce us more peculiarly to the golden 
age of Roman literature. Of Albius Tibullus we 



Verona Illustrate. -f Lib. 3. Amor. El. 15. 

J Ep. lib. xiv. Ep. 195. 



POETRY. 2 { J 

know at least that he was a patrician by birth, but 
the dates of his birth and death are both uncertain. 
We gather, indeed, from the lines of Domitius,* that 
he died in the same year as Virgil, viz. in 735, 
a. r. He appears to have enjoyed the strict friend- 
ship of Horace, who, in addressing to him an ode 
and epistle, calls him a sincere judge of his verses, 
and introduces several other remarks to his praise. 
The attention of Tibullus was almost solely directed 
to elegiac poetry, in which Quintilian-f* prefers him 
to Propertius, Ovid, and every other writer of that 
class. His verses are finely characterised by their 
union of the sweetness, elegance, harmony, tender- 
ness, and all the other ornaments of elegiac poetry — 
in expression always happy and clear — always tender 
and passionate, — always elegant and refined. When 
painting sentiments and feelings he ever follows 
nature as his gmide. 

Q. Horatius Flaccus was born in the year 688 of 
Rome, at Venusia, a city of Lucania. His father 
was a freedman only by condition, but made the 
most laudable efforts to have his son instructed in 
the sciences and letters at Rome. His early years 
having thus been past in study, he now embraced 
the military profession, and obtained the rank of 

* Te quoque Virgilio comitem non aequa Tibulle, 

Mors juvenem campos misit ad Elysios. 
f Instit. Orat. lib. x. c. 1. 



30 LITERARY HISTORY. 

tribune. It does not appear, however, that great 
courage formed one of the characteristics of our 
poet, as we learn, from his own confession, that, at 
the battle of Philippi he threw away his shield and 
took to flight. Returning to Rome, he devoted 
himself entirely to the study of poetry, and so suc- 
cessfully as to acquire, in a short time, a distinguished 
name, and an introduction, through the favor of 
Virgil and Varius, to the friendship of Mecaenas. 
The patronage of this great protector of literature 
seems to have continued stedfast and constant to 
the poet, and in some of his lines he endeavours to 
repay the obligations he lay under.* The friend- 
ship of Mecaenas introduced Horace next to the 
notice of Augustus, who held him equally in regard ; 
and the most lively expressions of gratitude are em- 
ployed to mark his sense of the favor and counte- 
nance bestowed upon him. A tender friendship 
also subsisted between Virgil and Horace, as the 
latter proves, by that ode, (among others of his 
effusions,) written when the former was about to 
depart for Athens.*^ Horace died, a. r. 745, in the 

* Among these 

Mecaenas atavis edite Regibus, 
O et praesidium, et dulce decus meum. 
•j- Navis, quae tibi creditum 
Debes Virgilium, finibus Atticis 
Reddas incolumen, prsecor, et serves 
Animae dimidium meae. 



POETRY. 



57th year of his age, following, at a very short interval, 
his great patron, Mecaenas. In judging of his cha- 
racter we gather from his own writings that he was a 
man addicted to pleasure, and fond of tranquillity. In 
these we also find, mingled with others having license 
of expression, and indelicacy of thought, very many 
passages eminent for a tone of the finest and m< i rf 
sublime morality. He boasts, with reason, of having 
been the first of Roman poets who dared to treat 
lyric poetry ; and his success places him on a level 
with the highest Greek writers of this species of 
verse. Though an imitator of Pindar, the enthu- 
siasm, emphasis, and force, that reign in his odes, 
and the flights to which he abandons his fancy, 
prove him inspired with that fire which alone can 
form a great poet; but there still is a propriety 
ever preserved in his verses, which renders them 
perfect. Seeking inspiration in the pages of the 
prince of lyric poets for his more elevated subjects, 
Horace disdained not the imitation of Anacreon in his 
more light and playful. But his peculiar gift is an 
impassioned tenderness which pervades his odes ; 
thus, in that on the illness of Mecaenas, and many 
others may similarly be instanced, he forms his 
verses not merely as a poet, or as other poets would 
do, but employs them as the organ of an impassioned 
feeling that expresses his deepest and truest senti- 
ments. The feature of morality forms also an 



OZ LITERARY HISTORY. 

ennobling characteristic in the poetry of Horace; 
he moves and bears away with him the mind of his 
reader, when in a lofty and imposing tone he incul- 
cates maxims and truths of the most important 
nature. 

But we find Horace using a different style in his 
satires, epistles, and " Art of Poetry." If in his 
odes he displays a style the highest and most exalted, 
in these he affords a model of the more simple and 
familiar ; it is a simplicity, however, possessing an 
unequalled elegance and grace ; the " Art of Poetry,"" 
containing the finest and most judicious instructions 
for guidance, whether in prose or poetic composition, 
has justly been denominated the code of the laws of 
good taste. But we must now proceed to the great- 
est of Roman poets, Publius Virgilius Maro. 

Virgil was born at a small village called at that 
period Andes, in the territory of Mantua, in a. r. 
683. He commenced the study of philosophy at 
Cremona, pursued it subsequently at Milan, and 
finally studied it jointly with poetry at Naples. 
When the division of lands to the soldiers of Octa- 
vius and Anthony occurred, Virgil finding himself 
deprived of his patrimonial farm, which lay near 
Mantua, repaired to Rome to effect the recovery of 
his property, and succeeded in his object. The verses 
he produced after coming to the capital procured 
him the acquaintance of Mecaenas and Augustus, 



POETRY. 33 

whose favor he continued ever after to enjoy in the 
highest degree. The Eclogues, in imitation of Theo- 
critus, may be considered his first productions ; to 
these succeeded the Georgics, in which Hesiod was 
his model ; and the great epic poem of the ^Eneid 
was his last undertaking. Unsatisfied, however, 
with the merits of this work, he designed proceeding 
to Greece, in the hope of enjoying there that tran- 
quillity and repose he deemed essential to its final 
correction and completion ; but while on the way, 
meeting Augustus then on his return from Greece 
to Rome, at his request he prepared to join him and 
retrace his steps to Italy. Falling unwell, however, 
on arrival at Brundusium, he died there in Septem- 
ber, b. c. 19, in the 51st year of his age. One of 
his last injunctions was, that the ./Eneid should be 
committed to the flames, as being yet unfinished and 
imperfect ; but the asseveration of his confidential 
friends, Lucca and Varius, that Augustus would 
never give his assent to such a step, induced him to 
yield the manuscript into their hands, on condition 
that nothing should be added to it ; and thus the 
passages, left unfinished by their author, remained 
imperfect in the publication of the poem. In cha- 
racter Virgil was of a mild disposition, unassuming 
in conversation, rather timid than bold, and sincere 
in his friendships. He possessed the affectionate 
regard not only of Mecaenas and Augustus, but of 



34 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



all the most illustrious persons of the age. But the 
great poet enioyed not the esteem and respect of his 
own gifted circle alone ; we have a happy proof of 
the honor universally rendered him in the fact rela- 
ted of his being one day present at the theatre dur- 
ing the recitation of some of his own verses, when 
the whole audience rose up in token of their reve- 
rence for the poet ; a mark of respect which, by the 
way, they were wont to render only to the Emperor. 
In his Bucolics, Virgil has been the disciple of 
Theocritus, and the greater part of his Eclogues are 
also imitated from the Greek poet, but meliorated 
and enriched with new beauties of his own. Various 
faults and defects have been noticed in the Eclogues 
of both these poets ; but, as the learned Andres* 
observes, in speaking to this point, all these disap- 
pear before the purity and elegance, feeling of nature 
and truth, and thousand other graces of both wri- 
ters. But the Georgics of Virgil are more admira- 
ble still. To these it was reserved to give didactic 
poetry that ornament and elevation that relieve the 
tedium of instruction by the allurement of verse. 
In preserving that clearness and simplicity that the 
didactic form demands, the poet had the art to add 
the spirit, the fire, the grace, and other attractions 



* On the origin, progress, and actual state of every literature,- 
Vol. ii. chap. 6. 



POETRY. 

characteristic of the most highly wrought and po- 
lished poetry. If such then be the high qualities to 
be admired in these works, in what terms are we to 
speak of the iEneid ? It may be here asserted, 
however, that even in the conception of this epic, 
Virgil was indebted to Grecian literature, chiefly, 
indeed, to the Iliad and Odyssy of Homer, models, 
nevertheless, which the Latin poet surpassed in many 
parts. Andres* institutes a long comparison between 
these t\vo great bards, and points out why and where 
the Roman poet is to be preferred to the Greek ; 
the argument of the iEneid he asserts grander and 
more worthy the song of the muses ; its fable better 
conducted ; in its whole more ample and more ani- 
mated also ; but the most striking superiority of 
Virgil, adds he, is displayed in the dramatic parts, 
and in the tender and pathetic scenes. Homer 
rarely moves the feelings ; but how animated are 
the passages of the Loves and Death of Dido, and 
an infinity of others that, like brilliant and precious 
diamonds, form the inestimable gem of the divine 
^Eneid ? " I cannot read," continues Andres, "the 
poems of Homer without a feeling of astonishment 
and wonder at that amazing genius. But in open- 
ing any page of the iEneid there are presented to 



* Origin, Progress, Sic. Vol. ii. c. 2. 



36 LITERARY HISTORY. 

me at once passages so touching as to affect the 
deepest feelings of my heart, and strongly move my 
mind. Where shall we find displayed an equal 
delicacy and grace, united to a tone so full of nature 
and dignity, in sounding the praises of Rome and 
Augustus ? Its decorum, its discrimination, sub- 
lime simplicity, and majestic naturalness make the 
-Eneid of Virgil the most perfect work that human 
genius can form." In spite of so many excellences, 
however, critics find in the iEneid ground for rea- 
sonable censure, as the writer just cited observes ; 
but as he also adds, " we may assert that human 
nature cannot produce a work altogether perfect, 
and that some defects are necessarily inseparable 
from humanity ; but in lifting the ^Eneid and read- 
ing some of its verses, we find all its blemishes dis- 
appear, and what is noble, pathetic, sublime, great, 
and divine, alone remain. " 

During the fortunate age of Augustus, many other 
poets florished in the various walks of poetry. 
Aurelius Propertius, in his elegies, tells us little of 
himself, but speaks almost solely of his loves. He 
enjoyed the friendship of Augustus and Mecaenas, 
both of whom he took occasion to flatter in his 
verses. His exact birth-place is unknown, but him- 
self informs us that it lay in Umbria. His style — 
neither that of Catullus nor Tibullus — is superior to 
both in vivacity of fancy and force of expression. 



POETRY. '57 

but inferior in grace to the former, and in passion 
and feeling to the latter. To these poets belonging 
to the times of Augustus, and whose works are yet 
extant, several others might be added whose pro- 
ductions are partly lost. Among these, the most 
deserving of notice appears to be C. Cornelius Gal- 
lus, called by S. Jerome in the Eusebian Chronicle, 
Forulian. The name of Forum Julii applied 
not so much to the Friuli in general as to a town 
there now called Cividal del Friuli, and there C. 
Gallus was born. He died in the year 728 of Rome, 
in the 43d year of his age. He was on terms of 
the strictest friendship with Virgil, who mentions 
him honorably in his tenth eclogue. We find him 
praised also by Propertius and Martial, besides by 
others. Varius and Lucca, the two bosom friends 
of Horace and Virgil, possessed probably some re- 
putation as poets. Horace certainly eulogises the 
latter in warm terms.* Tiraboschi enumerates 
several other less distinguished poets, but a more 
detailed notice is due P. Ovidius Naso, who be- 
longs also to the age of Augustus. In the last elegy 
of his Fourth Book, written during the period of 
his exile, Ovid has partly furnished us himself with 
the relation of his life. He there informs us that 
his birth-place was Sulmona, a city now belonging 
to the Abruzzi, in the year 710 of Rome — that he 

* Lib. i. Od. 6. 



38 LITERARY HISTORY. 

was of an ancient equestrian family ; that he was 
sent along with a brother to Rome, and there placed 
under the tuition of the most celebrated preceptors 
of the time. Exiled by Augustus in the year a. r. 
760 to Samoa in Scythia, he died there, according 
to the Eusebian Chronicle, in a. r. 770, in the 
60th year of his age. The cause of this exile, and 
the crime which brought upon Ovid the displeasure 
of the emperor, remain equally unknown, as no con- 
temporary author throws any light upon them, nor 
does the poet himself speak upon the subject but in 
an obscure and mysterious tone. Many modern 
writers have, how r ever, given us lengthened disser- 
tations on the motives which they variously attri- 
bute for the punishment of the poet, but these still 
only aiFord us simple conjectures, nor can they in- 
terest much the student of literary history. As to 
the character of the poetry of Ovid, beautiful and 
impassioned are the various descriptions and narra- 
tions frequently met with in his Metamorphoses. 
Many of his letters called Heroides possess also a 
great degree of tenderness and grace. Two opposite 
defects are, however, found in this poet. These 
are, a want of study in his expression, and a super- 
fluous refinement. He pleads guilty himself to the 
former charge.* 

* Stepe piget (quid enim dubitem tibi vera fateri ?) 
Corrigere, et longi ferre laboris opus. 

Lib. iii. De Ponto, El. 9. 



POETRY. 

His Metamorphoses, liis Heroides, and his Books 
of the Fasti, are the best works of Ovid. The 
elegies entitled Tristia, and the Letters from Pon- 
tus, possess also some beautiful passages ; but the 
distance from his friends, the barbarism of the peo- 
ple among whom he found himself, and the depres- 
sion occasioned by his exile, all necessarily conspired 
to extinguish the native vivacity of his genius in 
the unhappy poet.* 

These were the most illustrious poets who adorned 
the brilliant epoch of which we speak. Should it 
be wished to trace the causes effecting the rise of 
Latin poetry to so high a degree of splendor, we 
shall find the one of principal force in the remarkable 
encouragement conferred on the study of poetry by 
the munificent patronage of Augustus and Mecaenas. 
Horace and Virgil afford sufficient proof of this by 
the frequent repetition, through every part of their 
works, of the praises bestowed on these their great 
patrons. Augustus himself appears in the character 
of a diligent student, as Suetonius^ mentions several 
productions of his both in prose and verse ; he ap- 
plied himself earnestly, it would also appear, to the 



* Romini, in his Life of Ovid, has sketched with a na 
hand the biography of this author, and given an accurate analysis 
of his poetry Barbacovi. 

■f In Aug. c. 85. 



40 LITERARY HISTORY. 

study of Greek literature. To estimate, again, the 
merits of Mecaenas, as the generous protector of the 
learned, and of poets peculiarly, it is sufficient to 
reflect that the recollection of that liberality has been 
strong enough to induce posterity to make his name 
the property of all who have since followed his ex- 
ample. But we may now pass from poetry to the 
other branches of literature, which at this time 
florished no less wonderfully in Rome. 

Poetry was cultivated by the Romans previous to 
eloquence ; but the latter attained perfection first. 
We have already traced the happy progress this art 
had made in the sixth century of the Republic. 
The honor in which orators were held, the power 
they enjoyed in the state, the riches and high offices 
the possession of eloquence enabled them to obtain, 
necessarily induced the first minds to devote them- 
selves to its study with increasing ardor. When, 
in addition to this, the conquest of Greece had in- 
troduced to the Romans a free and uninterrupted 
intercourse with that country the displays of her 
orators heard with pleasure, and their productions 
studied with admiration, a happy spirit of emulation 
was excited. We have already spoken of the w r ork 
of Cicero, De claris Oratoribus, in which he has 
left us the history of Roman eloquence, enumerating 
all the orators of any distinction. His highest eulo- 
gium is there reserved for the two famous popular 



ELOQUENCE. 41 

tribunes, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, (who both 
afterwards perished in the seditions raised by the 
opposite party,) whose oratorical talents stood the 
highest of their times. Caius, Cicero tells us, was 
a person of the highest abilities, powerful in expres- 
sion, brilliant in ideas, and impressive in delivery. 
Cornelia, again, the mother of these two celebrated 
brothers, merits a place in literary history, both on 
account of her own acquirements, and those with 
which she studied to adorn her sons. This illustrious 
Roman matron, daughter to Scipio Africanus the 
Great, after losing her husband, Tiberius Gracchus, 
the father of the two tribunes, though courted by 
Ptolemy King of Egypt, nobly declined the offer in 
order to devote herself wholely to the education of 
her sons ; and in fact, as Cicero relates,* the most 
eminent masters of Greece were employed for this 
purpose. Eloquent herself and skilled in different 
sciences, she was the authoress of several letters 
highly praised by Cicerof and Quintilian.^ She 
enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing her sons become, 
by means of their rhetorical talents, the arbiters, so 
to say, of the Roman people, and had the honor of 
a statue raised to her by the people in the Portico 



De Clar. Orat. No. 27. + Do. do. No. 5G 

± Instit. Oral. lib. 1. c. 1. 



42 LTEEAEY HISTORY. 

of Metellus, with this glorious inscription : — " To 
Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi."* 

Of the many other more or less eminent orators 
that Rome possessed, Cicero speaks but slightly till 
he reaches the names of L. Crassus and M. Anto- 
nius, whom he characterises as very distinguished 
orators, and states this as the period when his coun- 
trymen first commenced to rival the oratorical glory 
of the Greeks. Antonius held the consulship in the 
year 654 of Rome ; Crassus in 658. All that Cicero 
has written in their praise, in the work we have 
cited, is well worthy of perusal, particularly where 
in the exordium or introduction to the third book of 
the Orator, in celebrating the eloquence of Crassus, 
he displays so beautifully his own. He also speaks 
in the highest terms of M. Antonius, and remarks 
the wonderful power he possessed in moving the 
feelings. Next to these, there is Quintus Horten- 
sius, at once the friend" and rival of Cicero, and 
only eight years older. Even in the twentieth year 
of his age, Hortensius gave proof in the Forum 
of that eminence as an orator he was destined to 
attain , his talents, in their first displays, daz- 
zled the eyes of all, and, to adopt the expression 
of Cicero, like a statue of Phidias scarcely yet 



Pliny Hist, lib, 34, c, G. 



ELOQUENCE 4«'3 

even fully seen, excited admiration and applause. 
Cicero, who, as has been already observed, was 
younger than his rival, confesses that the example 
afforded him at that early age, of the general admi- 
ration acquired by Hortensius, was a strong motive 
to himself in causing his determination to pursue the 
same career. His first attempt, in fact, contributed 
to throw his distinguished rival into the shade, and 
deprived him of that superiority previously possessed 
in the Forum. Though we have lost in the long 
course of time, some of his orations, those which 
remain are sufficient to qualify Cicero, without com- 
parison, with the title of " Prince of Orators ;" 
and as long as good taste shall endure in any part 
of the world, he will be read, admired, and as much 
as possible imitated. Eloquence never shone so 
triumphant as when uttered by the mouth of Cicero ; 
his power in carrying conviction to the intellect was 
no less overpowering than his force in moving the 
feelings ; to turn, to direct, and to conduct at his 
will the minds of the judges, the senate, and the 
people, were the secure effects of his all powerful 
oratory. Who can study his orations without feel- 
ing himself deeply penetrated by those feelings 
which the incomparable orator inspires ? How strong 
is not the feeling of odium excited in us by the ora- 
tion against Verres, against Cataline, or Antony ? 
And who, on the other hand, can withhold his tears 



44 LITERARY HISTORY. 

in perusing the defence of Milo ? There is not, in 
fact, an oration of Cicero, in which the lofty quali- 
ties of his eloquence are not happily displayed ; nor 
was the art of exciting the sensibilities and affec- 
tions, or commanding by the force of his talent the 
minds of an audience, ever equally possessed by any 
other orator. A comparison has been instituted by 
many ancient, as well as modern authors, between 
the eloquence of Cicero and that of Demosthenes, 
some asserting the superiority of the Greek to the 
Roman, others that of the Roman orator to the 
Greek ; but the disquisitions of Tiraboschi * and 
Andres, "f* have clearly established where, and in 
which characteristics, the oratory of the Roman ex- 
cels considerably that of Demosthenes. 

Cicero was the first, but not the only orator, that 
his age produced in Rome ; he gives himself praise 
to Marcellus, as distinguished in the art, and extols 
yet higher the oratorial merits of Julius Caesar. His 
panegyric on the latter is indeed highly wrought, 
asserting him as the most elegant of Latin orators ; 
the encomium of Quintilian on Caesar is also beau- 
tiful. " Had he," says Quintilian, " only devoted 
himself to the Forum, he should have proved the 
only one among us fitted to rival Cicero. Such 



• Hist, of Ital. Lit. vol. ii. c. 2. f Origin, &c. vol. iii. c. "2. 



ELOQUENCE. 45 

force has he, such talent, and such vivacity in argu- 
ment, that the same abilities evidently directed him 
in the Rostrum as on the field of battle.'" 

Latin eloquence had now attained that highest 
degree of glory and perfection to which, in any 
language, it can be brought ; but, as frequently hap- 
pens, it did not long maintain the high position 
it had reached. The golden age of Roman litera- 
ture is usually considered as extending to the death 
of Augustus, and does so in fact when viewed in 
relation to its branches of poetry and history ; but 
the eloquence of the Forum commenced to be viti- 
ated after the death of Cicero, while Augustus was 
yet alive ; continued its decay in the subsequent 
times, and became finally completely corrupted. 
There is yet extant a dialogue, attributed by some 
to Tacitus, by others to Quintilian, or some other 
writer, entitled, " On the Causes of the Corrup- 
tion of Eloquence" in which many reasons are 
adduced as effecting this vitiation. One of the most 
powerful of these is stated to be the change intro- 
duced into the government of the state, by its pass- 
ing from the republican to the monarchic form. 

In the time of freedom, eloquence, as has been 
already observed, was one of the surest paths to 
the highest offices and dignities of the Republic. 
It must be recollected, too, that the arguments 
which then served as the vehicles of its display were 



46 LITERARY HISTORY. 

very frequently of the highest importance. To pro- 
tect a subject province from the oppression under 
which it might be placed ; to combat and overturn 
the designs of the ambitious and innovating en- 
deavouring changes inimical to the general weal ; 
to persuade to or dissuade from the introduction of 
new laws; to induce or avert peace or war, as cir- 
cumstances might demand, — were frequently the 
momentous objects of the exertions of the Roman 
orator. 

But when, with the loss of liberty, the sovereign 
authority had passed into a single hand, the decision 
of all causes having a public, as well as of the most 
important of those having merely a private interest, 
depended no longer upon the eloquence of the orator, 
nor the determination of the senate or the people, 
but upon the arbitrary will of the emperors alone. 
The favor of the prince, in whom all the supreme 
power resided, now became the only avenue to the 
acquisition of the honors and employments of the 
state. It is not then astonishing that eloquence, 
having now become comparatively useless — no longer 
animated to exertion by the presence of a great 
audience, nor by the hope of reward in dignities 
and honors — felt itself deprived of that strength 
previously so much admired in Roman oratory. 

From the eloquence of the Forum, we may now 
proceed to that of historical writing. 



HISTORY. 47 

The study of history was one of the latest to 

which the attention of the literati of Rome was 
directed. Some writers had, indeed, undertaken 
the narration of the wars and vicissitudes of the 
Republic, executed in a dry and unattractive style ; 
but a history woven with elegance, art, and elo- 
quence, had not appeared till the times of Cicero. 
That great writer beheld with displeasure the evi- 
dent inferiority here of his countrymen to the Greeks. 
He was well aware of the great advantages to be 
derived from the study of history, the great instruc- 
tress to human life. With this view, he speaks in 
several parts of his works in high terms of this study, 
prescribing, at the same time, the laws and rules 
which ought to serve for the guidance of the his- 
torian. His remarks principally contributed per- 
haps to attract the attention of some contemporary 
writers to the compilation of Historical Notices of 
Rome ; but no remains of their works are now ex- 
tant. Those of the orator Hortensius, of whom 
we. have already spoken, and of Pomponius Atticus, 
merit, however, a more particular notice. The 
** Annals" of Hortensius are found honorably men- 
tioned in the pages of Velleius Patereulus;* but 
there is much greater reason to lament the loss of 
the work of Pomponius. This, as Cornelius Neposf* 

* Hist. lib. 2. f In Vita Attici. 



48 LITERARY HISTORY. 

attests, comprised a brief relation of the most me- 
morable events in the history of Rome, from its 
foundation down to his own times. Besides this, 
he composed a history, in Greek, of the consulship 
of Cicero. But Cicero wished not, it would appear, 
to intrust this subject to another's pen, as he wrote 
not only a similar work, in Greek likewise, but 
dedicated a Latin poem to the same subject. All 
these works, however, are unfortunately lost. One, 
indeed, of the historical works of Cicero has reached 
us, and that too belonging to a class of which he 
had been the first to set the example in Roman 
literature, viz. Literary history, as his w r ork, De 
Claris Oratoribus, which has been already referred 
to several times, comes probably under this head, — 
a work worthy of being proposed as a model to 
every one treating of a similar subject. 

We shall now proceed to speak briefly of those 
historians of whose works, if not entire, at least a 
part, has been preserved. 

Julius Caesar may reasonably be included among 
the most eminent writers of history. We have 
already seen that he alone was capable perhaps of 
combating Cicero in the eloquence of the Forum. 
Himself highly polished in style, he undertook the 
exposition of its precepts in his two books, De 
Analogic — books in which the principal circum- 



HISTORY. 4!) 

stance to admire is the fact, as Suetonius* relate-, 
of their having been composed while their author 
was travelling- across the Alps on his route from the 
Cisalpine to Transalpine Gaul. Other treatises of 
his are enumerated, but the commentaries entitled 
De Bello Gallico, et de Bello Civilly are now 
alone extant. However, these suffice to prove to 
us the grace, clearness, and force which marked the 
style of Caesar. Easy, perspicuous, and eloquent, 
he employs an elegance the more admirable from 
the perfect absence of all studied effort to attain it. 
The judgment pronounced by Cicero on these com- 
mentaries merits being quoted. *f* 

After Caesar, Sallust and Cornelius Nepos deserve 
the next place. C. Sallustius Crispus was born at 
Amiternum, in the territory of the Sabines, in the 
year of Rome 668, and died in 719. He rendered 
liimself celebrated by his historical works, among 
which the most valuable was a History of the Roman 
Republic from the death of Sylla to the conspiracy 



* In Jul. c. 56. 

■f Commentaries, quosdam scripsit Caesar rerum suarum, valde 
qui dam probandos : nudi enim sunt, recti et venusti, omni ornatu 
orationis, tanquam veste, detracto ; sed dum voluit alios habere 
parata, unde sumerent, qui vellent scribere historiam, ineptis gra- 
tum fortasse fecit, qui volunt ilia calamistris inurere ; sanos quidem 
homines a scribendo deterruit : nihil enim est in historia puia et 

illustri brevitate dulcius De Oar. Orat. num. 73. 

C 



50 LITERARY HISTORY. 

of Cat aline. This is, however, lost, and two other 
brief histories are now alone extant, — one the nar- 
ration of the wars of the Romans against Jugurtha, 
the other, that of the conspiracy of Cataline ; and 
in the merits of the latter, we find reason to lament 
the loss of the former. The characteristics of the 
style of Sallust are conciseness and effect. His re- 
marks could be expressed neither with greater purity 
nor force. By a few strokes of his pen, he sketches 
sufficiently the characters of the persons his narra- 
tive presents to him, to leave nothing essential 
which a more copious diction could supply. Sallust 
is in fact justly reputed one of the best writers of 
all antiquity ; and Quintilian, after eulogising him in 
the highest terms, hesitates not to place him on a 
level with the Greek historian, Thucydides. 

The dates of the birth and death of Nepos are 
uncertain. It can alone be affirmed, that after having 
long enjoyed the strict friendship of Pomponius 
Atticus, he survived that writer, as he informs us 
himself in his biography of him, and that he was 
also on equally friendly terms with Cicero, whose 
life, indeed, he had written in a work extending to 
several books. From his pen we have the lives of 
the great captains, — of Cato Uticensis, and that of 
Pomponius Atticus, which yield not, in purity and 
elegance of style, to the works of any other writer, 
but, in force and vivacity, are much inferior to the 



HISTORY. 51 

liistories of Sallust and Coesar. Nepos had com- 
posed several other historical works that are, how- 
ever, no longer extant, particularly that compen- 
dium of universal history to which Catullus alludes.* 

These were the principal historians who florished 
in the times of Cicero and Caesar. The reign of 
Augustus, indeed, produced an equal number, but a 
portion of the works of Titus Living have alone es- 
caped that general destruction which has involved 
them all. Augustus himself wished, it should ap- 
pear, to be included in the list, as Suetonius relates 
that he had drawn up a memoir, in thirteen books, 
of a part of his life. The custom of writing the 
relation of their own actions seems, in fact, to have 
been common, at that period, to all persons of cele- 
brity. Emilius Scaurus, L. Catullus, and C. Sylla 
had set the example ; but their memoirs, along with 
several others, are lost to us. It remains then to 
notice T. Livius, born at Padua, or, as some assert, 
at Abano, a village of that district. 

We are scarcely acquainted with any of the cir- 
cumstances of his life, a but the absence of such in- 



* . . . . Cum ausus es unus Italorum 
Omne aevum tribus explicare chartis 

Doctis, Jupiter ! et laboriosis Carm 1 , 

a Born, according to some classic authorities, in 42 b.c. and died 

17 A.C. 



52 LITERARY HISTORY. 

formation should have been little to be lamented 
had the whole of his copious Roman History, ex- 
tending from the foundation of the city to the death 
of Drusus, and comprised in a hundred and forty- 
two books, been at least preserved to us. No one 
had, as yet, undertaken or completed a work of 
equal magnitude, and all the ancient writers con- 
cur in eulogising it. Seneca the philosopher calls 
Livy " a most eloquent mail, 11 * — Pliny the elder de- 
clares him " a most celebrated author. ""J* Quin- 
tilian, in particular, bestows the highest encomiums 
on Livy, besides calling him a man of " a wonderful 
fluency," and in expression, especially, " eloquent 
beyond belief," he observes, that as to the feelings, 
and particularly the more tender, no historian has 
ever been known to equal him.t A. Pollio has 
accused Livy of having employed a certain Paduan 
provincialism in his composition ; but he alone has 
been able to discover it. This eminent writer has, 
however, been accused of other defects ; of too great 
a credulity, for example, in recounting the pro- 
digies and miraculous circumstances said to have 
occurred, but in this he only repeats those relations 
of more ancient writers, a traditional belief of which 



* De Ira i. c. 16. 

f Prsefat. ad Hist. Nat. 

X Quintil. Instit. Orat. lib. 10. c. 1. 



HISTORY. 53 

existed among the people, without asserting his own 
persuasion of their truth, and sometimes insinuating. 
in fact, his utter disbelief of them. Nor, indeed, 
ought the historian to be censured for the relation 
of those improbable and unnatural events we find 
recorded in his pages, as it is to be recollected that 
the belief of these, influencing deeply certain public 
events, they could not be omitted without failing 
in the complete narration of the facts. The ha- 
rangues that Livy attributes to the generals of 
armies, and other celebrated persons, are next con- 
demned by some as mere fabrications of his own, only 
founded upon their probable originals ; but all the 
most accredited annalists of antiquity share tins 
fault in common with him ; and it is the more 
readily to be excused, as thereby we possess many 
orations and harangues of the highest eloquence, 
which may serve as perfect models for such compo- 
sition. Livy died, at his native pla#e, in the fourth 
year of the reign of Tiberius ; but before quitting 
him we cannot refrain from quoting, in addition to 
what has been already said to his praise, the judg- 
ment which the Abbe Andres has pronounced upon 
his merits as an historian. " But let us leave aside," 
says he, u all these, and all the ancient and modern 
Greek, as well as Roman historians, and yield the 
first place to the prince of all annalists, Livy. 
Charmed by the beauty of the parts, and nobleness 



54 LITERARY HISTORY. 

of the characteristics of the annals of Livy, I cannot 
refuse the historic crown to the brow of the Paduan. 
What an acute talent, and what a vast mind dis- 
played in the disposition of so many facts in so fine 
a method, and so wise an arrangement, leaving every 
thing in its own place, nothing to interrupt or des- 
troy the course of the narrative, nothing made 
obscure or confused; everywhere clearness, excellent 
method, and due arrangement reign. What philo- 
sophy, without the ostentation of idle sentences or 
studied reflections ! I know not whether there is 
most to be admired in Livy, the vastness of his 
mind, the acuteness of his genius, the maturity of 
his judgment, the immensity of his knowledge, or 
his sobriety, prudence, moderation, and simplicity."* 
From the Belles Lettres and lighter literature we 
shall now pass to the graver sciences, but while at 
the confines between both, may speak of one of 
the most learned men that Rome possessed at that 
time, and whose reputation stood equally high in 
each, namely, M. T. Varro. He continued to write 
until an extreme old age ; and Pliny relates,*}* that 
in his 88th year Varro still employed himself in 
literary composition. He died at 90 years of age 
nearly, in the year 727 of Rome. He was honored 



* Dell. Orig. Prog. &c. d'ogni Lett. torn. iii. lib. 3. c. L 
•J- Lib. xix. c. 4. 



VARRO. 55 

by the most ample eulogiums of Seneca and Quin- 
tilian, but more particularly of Cicero. At the 
period when he had reached his 78th year, Yarro 
was already the author of 490 books, in which, 
adding those afterwards produced, there was not a 
science of which he had not treated ; grammar, elo- 
quence, poetry, the drama, history, antiquities, phi- 
losophy, political science, agriculture, religion, archi- 
tecture, nautical science even ; and, in fine, all the 
sciences and liberal arts, were illustrated by his pen ; 
but of this great list six books of the seventy-four 
which he had written on the Latin language, and 
even these imperfect, — the three books on agricul- 
ture, and some few fragments of the others, have 
alone descended to our times. 



Oi 



SECTION IV. 

THE LITERATURE OF ROME AND ITALY CONTINUED, TO THE 
DEATH OF AUGUSTUS. 

The study of philosophy had already been intro- 
duced to Rome at the period of the arrival of Pane- 
zius and Polybius there, and assumed additional 
vigor in the presence of the Athenian ambassadors, 
Carneas, Diogenes, and Critolaus, as has been re- 
marked in a preceding section ; but its most striking 
development occurred after the conquest of Greece 
by the Roman arms. That country was then divided 
into a multitude of philosophic sects ; among these 
were the stoical, epicurean, peripatetic, and acade- 
mic, this latter, too, subdivided into three, or, as 
others assert, into five different sects or branches. 
Many of the Greek philosophers followed their con- 
querors to Rome, in the hope of acquiring fame, or 
ameliorating their condition there ; and among the 
auditors they attracted, some embraced the opinions 
of one, some of another sect. Of those among the 
Romans who illustrated philosophy by their writings. 



58 LITERARY HISTORY. 

Cicero a occupies the most conspicuous place, the same 
Cicero who stood not only unequalled in the elo- 
quence of the forum, but enjoyed also the highest 
name in philosophy and didactic eloquence. He had 
eagerly attended the instructions of the most eminent 
philosophers Rome then possessed ; and after having 
witnessed the republic torn by dissensions, and con- 
vulsed by civil wars, finally fallen under the domi- 
nion of Caesar, the last two years of his life were 
principally devoted to the ardent study of philosophy, 
in a quiet and solitary repose. None of his country- 
men had yet undertaken the illustration of philo- 
sophic subjects in the Latin language ; the very 
learned Varro, even though versed in all the sciences, 
and touching upon this ground at some points, had 
only excited others to the study of philosophy, with- 
out himself affording any material instruction there. 
Cicero's own words in his Academic Questions are 
to that effect.* Actuated, then, by motives of the 
purest patriotism, he undertook the mighty task 
of rendering Latin, so to say, the great body 
of Greek philosophy, and executed it, too, in so 
masterly a manner, that the merits of his transla- 
tions even surpassed those of his great originals ; 

* Philosophiam multis locis inchoasti ad impellendum satis, ad 
edocendum parum, lib. 1. num. 3. 

a Born in 106, b.c. at Arpinum in Latium, 



PHILOSOPHY. 50 

nor did his inquiries leave any subject unembraced. 
In his works of the Nature of the Gods, of Di- 
vination, and of Fate, there is found comprised all 
that the most illustrious philosophers had conceived 
till that day in natural theology. In his books, De 
Finibus Bonorurn et Malorum, De Legibus, De 
Ojficiis, and the Tusculan Disputations, also in 
the Dialogues on Old Age, On Friendship, and 
the Paradoxes, very many and most important 
questions in moral philosophy are admirably discus- 
sed. The morality which Cicero peculiarly incul- 
cated in his treatise De Ojficiis, escaped not indeed 
every sensure, although generally admired and ex- 
tolled ; while the celebrated Barbeyrac, in the pre- 
face prefixed to the work of Puffendorf, remarks, 
that " this excellent work is known to all as the 
best treatise on morals which we have from all anti- 
quity, the most regular, the most methodical, and the 
one which approaches nearest to a perfect system.' 1 " 
To those branches of philosophy which are employed 
in the study of natural objects, we find from 
various passages of his works, that Cicero had also 
devoted a most attentive study. The second book 
of the treatise on the Nature of the Gods, bears 
noble evidence to the knowledge which he had ac- 
quired in natural history, astronomy, anatomy, and 
all the sciences pertaining to the study of nature. 
A finer description cannot be read than that which 



(50 LITERARY HISTORY. 

lie has given us of the human frame, without adduc- 
ing others of equal merit. His treatises relative 
to the oratorical art, in which he has exposed in an 
admirable style, the most just and accurate rules for 
the formation of a perfect orator, ought also to be 
included among his philosophic or didactic works. 
In the number of the many philosophic writings of 
Cicero that have unfortunately perished, are the 
books De Gloria, that entitled Hortensius, or a 
Panegyric on Philosophy, and those called De Re- 
publica, one of his greatest productions, and which 
shall be alluded to again. Other illustrious cultiva- 
tors of philosophy existed at this time, whose works 
are mentioned at length by Tiraboschi,* but none 
of which are at this day extant. 

We may now sketch the progress that the Ro- 
mans made at this time in the mathematical sciences. 
The celebrated M. Vitruvius Pollio, whose work 
on architecture still exists,*f* has left us most con- 
spicuous proofs of his eminence in these sciences, 
particularly in Geometry. We are, however, but 
slightly acquainted with the circumstances of his 



* Storia dell. Let. Ital. vol. ii. c. 14. 

•f The Life of Vitruvius has been carefully written by the Mar- 
quis Bernardo Galliano, in his magnificent edition of the works of 
this author by him translated and commented. Naples 1758 — 
Barbacovi. 



MATHEMATICS. 91 

life, except that lie certainly florished during the 
reign of Augustus, to whom he dedicated his work, 
and by whom he was charged with the superintend- 
ance of the military machines, as his own assertion 
proves.* But among the most illustrious mathe- 
maticians of Rome, Caesar especially merits notice. 
The wonderful bridge constructed by him across the 
Rhine ; the admirable military engines employed in 
sieges, and the descriptions he has left of these, prove 
how profoundly versed he was in those sciences ; but 
a yet more noble monument to his fame is the re- 
form which he effected on the Roman calendar. 
Among the many studies to which Caesar, amid his 
various military and political occupations, applied 
himself, was also that of Astronomy. Macrobius*f" 
informs us that he left written learned treatises on 
the course of the stars, which are also more than 
once referred to by the elder Pliny. J His know- 
ledge of Astronomy, then, rendering him acquainted 
with the disorder and confusion in which the calen- 
dar of that time lay, he undertook, with the assist- 
ance of Sosigenes, a celebrated Alexandrian astro- 
nomer, and several other philosophers of fame, the 
task of its reformation, reducing the year to 365 
days : a calendar which, from the circumstances 



* Prooem. lib. 1. 
f Lib. i. Saturn, c. 16. J Lib. xviii. c. 16, 17, 10. 



02 LITERARY HISTORY. 

of its origin, has since been denominated the Julian. 
Caesar cultivated successfully almost all the sciences, 
and there scarcely remained one to which he had 
not directed the powers of his amazing genius. One 
of the greatest men that ever lived, in his character 
was exhibited the very rarest example of the com- 
bination in one person of all the qualities which 
unite to form a great prince, a great captain, a great 
man of letters, and philosopher. He appears even 
not to have been a stranger to the study of Juris- 
prudence, as Suetonius* relates that he had in- 
tended the reformation of the Civil Law, in giving 
to it a new form, and from the immense and con- 
fused mass of laws then existing, in selecting the 
most desirable and appropriate, to form them into 
a fixed and regular system. Suetonius"!* further re- 
lates, that he had contemplated the formation of 
magnificent collections of ancient monuments and 
books of every kind ; but this, as well as all his 
other great designs, perished in the violent death 
by which he fell at the Senate House, in the year 
709 of Rome, and 56th of his age 4 



* C. 64. In vita Julii. + C. 67. In vita Julii. 

X Caesar was not only, as has been asserted, a great captain, but 

one of the most wonderful that ever lived. He had subjugated all 

Gaul, as well as a portion of Britain ; defeated the forces of his rival, 

Pompey the Great ; overcome King Ptolemy and subjugated Egypt ; 



CICERO. 81 

We may now return to Cicero, the other most 
splendid ornament of the epoch of which we speak. 
To find any private person who had written as ex- 
tensively as he, should naturally be to us an object 
of astonishment, but what shall we say of one who, 
though finding himself almost forced to appear as a 
speaker in every cause of moment, having a principal 
charge in every public affair, who sustained all the 
most important and weighty offices of the Republic, 
maintained an uninterrupted correspondence with 
all the most distinguished of his cotemporaries, and 



vanquished Pharnaces, son to Mithradates ; together with Scipio 
and Juba in Africa, and the sons of Pompey in Spain. Remaining 
master and arbiter of the Republic on the death of that rival, he 
displayed a magnanimity and clemency, astonishing beyond belief, 
toward the followers of the opposite party. In a tragedy attributed 
to Seneca, there occurs the following passage relative to his death : 

Invictus acie, gentium domitor, Jovi aequatus 
Infando civium scelere occidit. — Traged. Octav. 

In the celebrated Grand Ducal Gallery of Florence, there is a 
head of Brutus, commenced, but left unfinished, by Michael An- 
gelo, the motive for which is given in a distich sculptured below, — 

Dum Bruti effigiem sculptor de marmore ducit, 
In mentem Caesar venit, et abstinuit. — Barbacovi. 

These remarks, as well as a few which precede them on the same 
subject, are inserted by Barbacovi in the text, but here transferred 
to a note, as the military talents and exploits of one who, though a 
great captain, has found a place in those pages only as a literary 

man, have but a remote interest to the student of literary history 

Translator. 



04 LITERARY HISTORY. 

who, though unhappily forced to yield for some time 
to the envy and fury of his enemies, and retire from 
Rome, was able, notwithstanding, to compose so 
many works that have unshaken remained the ad- 
miration of all ages. It is unnecessary here to give 
any detail of his life. Several authors have written 
it, among whom the work of the celebrated Mid- 
dleton, in his excellent Memoir of Cicero, has ex- 
hibited the great and brilliant virtues of the orator ; 
successfully defending his character, at the same 
time, from the injurious and unworthy calumnies of 
the Greek historian, Dio Cassius, who lived, in fact, 
more than two centuries after the death of the great 
philosopher. His eloquence and patriotism proved 
fatal to him in the end. Anthony, against whom, 
in his anxiety for the salvation of the Republic, he 
had composed his Philippics, remaining victorious 
in the civil wars which followed the death of Caesar, 
and associating to himself Octavius and Lepidus, placed 
him first in the unhappy list of citizens condemned 
to death by the triumvirate, on account of their 
enmity to its power. Rome then exhibited a spec- 
tacle more atrocious than had ever previously been 
witnessed within her walls, in the head and hands 
of that orator, who had saved so many of her citi- 
zens, and the Republic itself, suspended on the very 
rostrum whence he had so frequently displayed his 



CICERO. 63 

divine eloquence.* All Rome, horror-struck at such 
a sight, proved with a universal groan the grief 
which it experienced from the inhuman slaughter of 
so great a man.* 

During the lifetime of Augustus, the writers of 
that period appear to have scarcely dared to speak 
of Cicero in terms of praise, as that of course implied 
a censure of the former, who had at least permitted 
his death. Livy, as we gather from Seneca the 
Rhetorf* who has preserved some fragments of his 
lost books, though not mentioning Cicero with that 
esteem due to such a man, in the lifetime of Augus- 
tus, felt himself, however, obliged to acknowledge 
his merits in high terms.* It should exceed our 
limits to enumerate the equally warm eulogies of 

* All ancient writers, after the death of Augustus, in speaking 
of Cicero, seem carried away by their feeling of enthusiasm in cele- 
brating his merits. Velleius Paterculus, though writing in the time 
of the cruel and suspicious Tiberius, transported by indignation 
against Anthony, exclaims, — Nihil tamen egisti, M. Antoni . . . ni- 
hil, inquam, egisti . . rapuisti tu M. Ciceroni lucem solicitam, et 
aetatem senilem . . famam vero, gloriamque factorum atque dicto- 
rum adeo non abstulisti, ut auxeris. Vivit, vivetque per omnium 
saeculorum memoriam . . omnisque posteritas illius in te scripta 
mirabitur tuum in eum factum execrabitur, citiusque in mundo ge- 
nus humanum quam Ciceronis nomen cadet Histor. lib. 2. 

•f Suasor. 4. 

£ Vir magnus et acer et memorabilis fait in cujus laudes se- 
quendas Cicerone ipso laudatore opus fuerit. — Livy. 

a Cicero perished in 43 b. c. in the 63d year of his age. 



66 LITERARY HISTORY. 

modern writers on the gTeat Roman. The religious 
opinions of Cicero have formed a subject of enquiry 
to many authors; a mind of such powers as his 
must necessarily have discerned the falsehood of the 
religion of his country, and internally smiled at its 
mythology, although, when addressing the people, 
he might speak of the Gods in terms of the highest 
respect, as his words in a passage of the treatise, De 
Divinitate, infer.* The learned -f* Tiraboschi, 
whose remarks on this point are worthy of attention, 
demonstrates that Cicero had embraced a true and 
solid philosophy in religion, viz. that which the clear 
light of Nature teaches us. His treatise, in six 
books, De Republican appears to have been of all 
his works the dearest to its author, and the one in 
which his opinions are most freely expressed. Here 
then we have in that most beautiful fragment enti- 
tled the Dream of Scipio, the doctrine of the im- 
mortality of the soul advanced and asserted with so 
much force, that it may be assumed as a secure in- 
dex to the real sentiments of its author. Some 
other passages have been preserved by Lactantius 
Firmianus and St. Augustine, which might be at- 
tributed even to the wisest of Christian philosophers. 



* Majorum instituta tueri, sacra, cerimoniasque retinere, sapientis 

est De Divin. lib. ii. § ult. 

•f Stor. vol. ii. c. 4. 



(HERO. 83 

The books, De Republican that had been unfortu- 
nately lost, were not long since, as is known, in part 
discovered and brought to light by the celebrated 
Mai in Rome,* and there the passage or fragment 
of the Dream of Scipio is equally found. In this 
work the lines of Cicero, relative to the above-men- 
tioned law of natural reason, cannot be sufficiently 
admired ; but the remarks contained in his treatise 
on the Laws ought chiefly to be attended to, where, 
in addressing his most intimate friend Pomponius 
Atticus, and Quintus his brother, he would not ne- 
cessarily hold his real sentiments concealed. In the 
second book of that work, then, he places the laws 
relative to religion before all others. The manner 
in which he speaks against those who are called 
Atheists, and whose tenets involve a denial of the 
Deity, ought also be observed : as may his demon- 



* The existence of the treatise, De Republic^ during the early 
part of the middle ages, is made probable, though not proved, by 
the circumstance of a copy for perusal being made an object of re- 
quest at that period. It may not be universally known, that the 
practice adopted, as early as the period spoken of in the text, of 
erasing the writing on MSS. to give place for the insertion of new 
matter, had occasioned the obliteration of a MS. containing a 
considerable portion of the treatise, De Republican for the substitution 
of a commentary on the Psalms, by St. Augustine. Palimpsest was 
the name given to this species of MS. and it is to the circumstance 
of the discovery of that containing part of the Republican that allu- 
sion is made in the text Translator. 



(J8 LITERARY HISTORY. 

stration that no nation ever had existed in which 
the idea of a Supreme Being did not obtain ; and 
speaking again of the Atheists who, denying the 
operation of either Mind or Intelligence in the crea- 
tion of things, urge, as sufficient for this effect, the 
operation of chance alone, there are two passages in 
which his sentiments are strongly expressed.* But 
enough may have now been said relative to the re- 
ligious opinions of Cicero. 

We have seen the elegance, refinement, and elo- 
quence attained by the Roman writers of the happy 
age of which we speak ; equally in historical and 
didactic eloquence as in that of the Forum : but 
another species remains, in which an equal excellence 
had been reached, viz. the Epistolary. The Letters 
of Cicero yet extant, afford us many examples of the 
epistolary style of a great part of the most eminent 
men of that time, and acquaint us with the excellence 
of the taste which then reigned in such composition. 
A refined and happy style, adorned by a tone at once 
natural and simple, united to a noble and agreeable 
gravity, are not characteristics peculiar to the letters 



* What greater absurdity, says he, than his who — in se rationem 
et mentem putet inesse, in coelo mundoque non putet, au tea, quae 
vix summa ingenii ratione moveri putet ? — Cicer. de leg. ii. c. 17. 
And again : si quis dubitet, an sit Deus, haud sane intelligo, cur 
non idem sol sit, an nullus sit, dubitet De Nat. Deor. ii. c. 2. 



MEDICINE. 69 

of Cicero alone, but belong equally to all his cotem- 
poraries, and remain the finest models to this species 
of eloquence. 

Something may now be said upon Medical Science. 
Pliny the Elder asserts, that for a space of upwards of 
600 years no physicians had been found in Rome. Ti- 
raboschi gives a learned history of the progress and 
vicissitudes that the medical art experienced there, 
from the period of its introduction, and of the various 
foreign physicians who were attracted to its walls ; 
speaking at length of Asclepiades, a native of Bithynia, 
whose fame became great ; of Themiso and of An- 
tonius Musa, whose chief boast was his having saved 
the life of Augustus. Suetonius* affirms, that as a 
reward for this cure, a statue was raised to the phy- 
sician, and placed by the side of that of Esculapius. 
The gratitude of Augustus and the Roman Senate 
was not, however, confined to Musa alone, but ex- 
tended on his account even to all the other members 
of the profession, to whom the privilege of Roman 
citizenship, first granted by Julius Caesar, was con- 
firmed in perpetuity. Aulus Cornelius Celsus also 
undertook at this epoch the illustration of the medi- 
cal art by his writings. 

Theprecise country of this writer is unknown, but, 



In Aug. c. 59. 



70 LITERARY HISTORY. 

from his own words, it is at least certain that he was 
Italian by birth. He lived in the last years of the reign 
of Augustus, and under some of the succeeding em- 
perors. Celsus confined not himself to the medical 
sciences alone, but cultivated, with reputation, almost 
every kind, as Quintilian and Pliny the elder assert 
in several places, both writers honoring him at the 
same time with their warmest commendations ; but 
of all the works of Celsus, his eight books de Medica 
have alone reached us. His style is such as might 
be expected in a writer of that age, generally re- 
fined and neat. As to the merits of his doctrines 
he is by some condemned as but a superficial writer, 
deficient and unexact, while others, on the contrary, 
entertaining a very different opinion, hesitate not to 
honor him with the title of the Latin Hippocrates.* 
It may be here remarked, that no Roman citizen 
of those times ever deigned to exercise the medical 
profession, and that it consequently was from the 
other cities of Italy, or from neighbouring countries, 
that Rome drew her physicians, to whom the right 
of Roman citizenship was granted solely from the 
favor of the princes. 

* Among those who have eulogised the works of Celsus in the 
highest strains, the letters concerning him, written by the learned 
Professor G. Morgagni of Padua, and whom every one must admit 
a very competent judge on this subject, merit being read. — Ante 
Celsi Libros, edit. Patav. 1750. — Barbacovi. 



JURISPRUDENCE. ~\ 

The study of jurisprudence was esteemed much 
nobler, and held in far higher repute at Rome. The 
most illustrious and distinguished citizens applied 
themselves to this science, as one not less useful than 
honorable to its professors ; a learned jurisconsult 
having a continual concourse of persons attracted to 
him, some to obtain his counsel, others to acquire a 
knowledge of the laws. The manner, too, in which 
the jurists gave their replies partook of the majesty 
and gravity of the Roman character ; seated on a 
species of throne, they heard the statements of their 
clients, and delivered to them the suitable replies. 
We may quote what Cicero says on this point when 
speaking of himself;* but his eloquent treatise in 
praise of this science, where he illustrates the honor, 
authority, and kindly feeling it acquired for its 
professors, ought particularly to be looked to.~f* He 
remarks, at the same time, that no one could enjoy 
a sweeter or more honorable consolation in his old 
age than he who, after having borne the most im- 
portant charges of the republic, saw crowded around 
him his fellow-citizens demanding his opinion and 
advice, rendering thus the house of a learned jurist, 

* Ego aetatis potius vacationi confidebam, cum prsesertim non 
recusarem, quominus more patrio sedens in solio consul entibus 
responderem senectutisque non inertis grato atque honestojungerer 
munere — De. Leg. lib. i. num. 3. 

+ De Orat lib. i. num. 45. 



72 LITERARY HISTORY. 

in fact, the oracle of the city.* Among the most 
eminent of the jurisconsults who distinguished them- 
selves in the epoch of which we speak, the first who 
presents himself to us is Quintus Mutius Scaevola, 
who united a strong and powerful eloquence to a 
profound knowledge of the laws. He was eminent, 
at the same time, for his signal probity, and for the 
example he set to all the republic of every virtue. 
He was, besides, the first to reduce to some order 
and arrangement the civil law, relative to which he 
composed eighteen books of commentary; and these 
we find frequently referred to by the ancient juris- 
consults. Servius Sulpicius Rusus succeeded to the 
reputation of Scaevola. All writers on ancient juris- 
prudence concur in regarding him as one of the 
greatest men that Rome ever possessed ; but the 
eulogium with which Cicero honors him in his book 
de Claris Oratoribus need only be quoted here, — 
" I know not of one," says he " who ever applied 
with greater ardor to the study of jurisprudence, and 
of all the liberal arts." And in reply to the inter- 
rogatory of Brutus at this point, if he preferred him 



* Many authors have illustrated the history of this science, 
among those the very learned work of the French advocate Terra- 
son, entitled the History of Roman Jurisprudence, merits particularly 
being read, and equally so the treatise of the celebrated Heneccius 
on the History of Roman Law Barbacovi. 



JURISPRUDENCE. (6 

BcaeTola even, — " Certainly,* answers the orator ; 
" Scaevola, and some others, had great experience 
in civil law, but Sulpitius alone knew also the art of 
it." But another more favorable occasion presented 
itself to Cicero of proving the* esteem he entertained 
for Sulpitius. In the commencement of the civil 
Mar, which arose after the death of Caesar, whilst 
Anthony besieged Modena, Sulpitius having been 
dispatched by the senate to demand the abandon- 
ment of the siege, but dying immediately after his 
arrival at the camp, Cicero, when information of this 
had reached Rome, delivered then his ninth Phi- 
lippic, which is nought, in fact, but a funeral oration of 
his friend, that cannot be read without a tender 
sensation of feeling ; one passage is there also met 
with that may particularly be noticed : — w r here the 
orator repeats his praise of the admirable skill in 
jurisprudence possessed by Sulpitius, but the whole 
of this pathetically eloquent oration is worthy of 
being read. It concluded with the proposal of a 
decree for the erection, in the Forum, at the public 
expense, of a bronze statue to that great lawyer.* 
The advice of the orator was fully adopted by the 
senate. 



* The jurist Pomponius, who lived in the second century of the 
Christian era, affirms, that this statue still stood in Rome at that 

date, beside the rostrum of Augustus Barbacovi. 

D 



/ 4 LITERARY HISTORY. 

Sulpitius had written largely on civil law ; and 
Pomponius informs us that he had left behind him 
to the extent of 180 books on that subject, various 
fragments of which have been preserved in the body 
of the Roman laws. 

Another celebrated jurist of that age was Publius 
Alfenus Varus, a Cremonese by birth, who florished 
in the times of Augustus. He formed a large col- 
lection of legal decisions, divided into forty books, 
entitled Digesta, which are frequently quoted by 
the early writers on jurisprudence ; and such was, 
in fact, the esteem his learning had acquired for him 
in Rome, that after death funeral honors were 
celebrated to him at the public expense. 

After having related in detail the progress made 
by the Romans in every science, Tiraboschi proceeds 
to acquaint us with the means of instruction which 
they enjoyed, the public schools that were opened 
for the tuition of the youth, and the grammarians 
and rhetoricians who florished in' them, whose ex- 
ertions contributed to increase the love of letters, 
and to facilitate their study. Speaking of the latter 
art, Suetonius relates, that some Romans, in imi- 
tation of the Greeks, opened schools of eloquence, 
and thence assumed the name of Latin rhetoricians, 
their principal exercise being declamation, in which 
they not only instructed their disciples, but also 
frequently exercised themselves, proposing some 



LIBRARIES. JO 

argument analogous to those more usually treated 
of in the Forum. These intellectual contests were 
certainly in the highest degree serviceable to those 
engaging in them, as feigned combats are useful to 
soldiers, by preparing them for the real, whence 
persons even of an advanced age, and engrossed with 
public affairs, used frequently to practise declama- 
tion ; and Cicero himself delighted in that exercise. 
It was at this period, too, that Rome saw opened, 
for the first time, private, and afterwards public 
libraries, institutions of which, for the course of 
several centuries previous, it had had no conception, 
but which tended very materially to assist and in- 
crease the study of the sciences and letters. One 
T yrannio, a native of Amysa in Pontus, brought as 
a slave to Rome, and afterwards freed, had col- 
lected a library of 30,000 volumes ; but that of 
Lucullus, one of the greatest men Rome then pos- 
sessed, was much more celebrated ; a person of the 
highest talents, as Cicero attests, and gifted, in his 
language also, with a memory, as it were, divine, 
devoted to continual study, and amazingly versed in 
all the fine arts, Lucullus, after a close applica- 
tion for many years to the study of the sciences 
and government of the republic, elected suddenly 
to the supreme command of the army destined 
against Mithradates, proved himself one of the 
greatest captains Rome had ever known ; and after 



7C) LITERARY HISTORY. 

having borne, both in a civil and military capacity, 
the principal offices of the republic, retiring into 
private life, he offered a new spectacle to the eyes 
of his countrymen, in displaying to them the extent 
to which the luxury and magnificence of a private 
individual could reach. Delightful villas, ample and 
spacious porticoes, some situated on the sea, others on 
the slopes of hills, baths, theatres, pictures, and sta- 
tues, — the display, in short, of a grandeur and luxury 
more than royal, was exhibited to Rome. But what 
relates more immediately to our subject, is the exten- 
sive collection of books which he formed, and the 
free access to them which he permitted all to enjoy. 
Viewed in this point, Lucullus may reasonably be 
considered the chief protector of letters and the 
literati Rome had hitherto known ; for although 
Scipio and others had honored some poets and 
philosophers with their favor, no one had yet 
equalled Lucullus in the extent and regal munifi- 
cence of his encouragement to the sciences. He 
befriended equally all the learned, and peculiarly 
the Greek philosophers, in every means, entertaining 
them at his own table, and offering them the most 
unrestrained access to his house. 

From the many letters that mutually passed 
between Cicero and his intimate friend Pomponius 
Atticus, relative to their libraries, it is ascertained 
that the latter possessed one both copious and 



LIBRARIES. ( i 

nelect, whilst that of the former appears not to have 
been inferior. Cicero, however, did not confine his 
attention to his books alone, bnt eagerly introduced 
objects of antiquity to serve as decorations to his 
porticoes and libraries, and this may be inferred from 
the eleven letters, written probably in succession, 
and addressed to Atticus,* in which he reiterates his 
request for certain antique statues that were due 
him by his friend. Cicero also speaks of other 
private libraries ; nor is it singular that, at a time 
when the sciences were cultivated with so great an 
ardor, there were many who contended even in this 
point, as indeed usually happens, for the superiority 
in magnificence and luxury. All these, however, 
being strictly private, could not be of service to the 
public, save in so far as the courtesy or friendship of 
their proprietors permitted. Julius Caesar was the 
first, as Suetonius "(* asserts, to design the introduc- 
tion of extensive public libraries of Greek and Latin 
works to Rome ; and, well aware of the great learn- 
ing which the selection and arrangement of books 
demanded, had made choice of the famous Varro to 
the task, though that, equally with the other great 
measures for the public advantage he had meditated, 
perished in the conspiracy by which he fell. That. 



* Lib. i. Ep. 3. 4. 0. &c. + In Jul. c. 44. 



78 LITERARY HISTORY. 

however, which Caesar could not effect, A. Pollio, 
a person of great learning, and one of the most 
distinguished Roman patricians, accomplished, by 
means of the spoil he had acquired in the Dalma- 
tian war. His library was placed in a magnificent 
atrium, which he erected near the Temple of 
Liberty. It was rich in Greek and Latin works, 
and open to the public. The example, thus set by 
a private citizen was afterwards followed by Augus- 
tus, who added a very copious library to the mag- 
nificent temple, which he dedicated to Apollo, on the 
Palatine Hill. This library, from the circumstance 
pf its position, was then called that of Apollo ; and 
it is taken notice of by Horace. * Augustus founded 
also another library in the Portico, named from 
Octavia, his sister. 

The period which has been now described be- 
longs to the happy and florishing state of Roman 
or Italian literature, during the times of Caesar and 
Augustus. It remains to speak of the fine arts, 
viz. of the sculpture, painting, and architecture of 
the same age ; but as regards the first of these arts, 
it would appear that it was but partially familiar to 
the Roman people. It might be that the hands 
which had subjugated and governed nations, and 



* Lib. ii. Ep. 1. 



FIXE ARTS. 79 

which dictated laws to the world, considered them- 
selves debased by handling the chisel, or other mean 
manual instrument. But if the Romans deigned 
not themselves to exercise the art, they failed not 
to value and seek for the productions of its artists, 
and certainly their constant habit of transporting to 
Rome, and preserving there the finest monuments 
of the arts of conquered countries, proves that they 
could appreciate their value. The art -of painting 
was esteemed, however, less derogatory to the 
Roman citizen ; and some celebrated painters, even 
of distinguished family, are noticed by Pliny.* Archi- 
tecture was also studied among the Romans, but 
Pliny, contenting himself with the description of 
the superb and regal edifices of every kind that the 
latter years of the republic, and the times of Caesar 
and Augustus saw raised in Rome, has left us but 
little distinct information on this subject. The 
latter of those periods witnessed the magnificence of 
the public as well as private edifices of Rome brought 
to a higher degree of splendor and of grandeur than 
it had ever previously reached, or ever shall again 
probably attain. 



* Hist. Nat. c. 10. 



80 



SECTION V. 

THE LITERATURE OF ITALY FROM THE EPOCH OF AUGUSTUS 
TO THAT OF ADRIAN. 

We have seen, in a preceding section, that 
eloquence had reached in Rome the climax of its 
excellence and perfection, but that from the epoch of 
the subjection of the republic to the dominion of 
Augustus, and consequent decay of its freedom, the 
reasons previously adduced operated, even during 
the lifetime of that prince, to deprive the eloquence 
of the Forum of all its ancient strength. After his 
period every other species of the art, whether 
philosophical, didactic, or historical, partook of the 
decay, and a miserable corruption pervaded every 
branch of literature. When in letters, or the fine 
arts, that point which may be considered as con- 
stituting perfection is attained, the very desire to 
go beyond this bound becomes the source of decline, 
and the attempt to add new ornaments and graces to 
these, spoils, but not improves, by removing them 



ELOQUENCE. 81 

from that standard of excellence or perfection which 
had been reached. It happened thus, first, to elo- 
quence, which had been brought, by the genius of 
Cicero, to that highest point which it ever could 
attain. Succeeding orators, however, imagining that 
they could improve upon his excellencies, attempted 
improvements that were impossible, and consequently 
introduced its first corruptions and decay into the 
art. The style of that great orator was now cen- 
sured as too free and diffuse, and another at once 
abrupt and harsh, full of subtile conceits, affected 
and obscure, commenced to be introduced. The 
earliest or principal author of this corruption was 
Asinius Pollio, though otherwise a person, as has 
been already said, of deep learning, and one to 
whom Roman literature owed much on account of 
the public library which he was the first to institute 
at Rome ; but his endeavour seems to have been to 
establish a reputation for himself on the ruin of that 
of others. The Commentaries of Caesar he censured 
as negligently written,* — wrote a book against Sal- 
lust, accusing him of many blemishes and defects: — 
remarked upon the Paduan Provincialism, the quam- 
dam patavinitatem of the style of Livy; but his 
most bitter and invidious remarks were reserved for 
Cicero. 

* Sueton. in Jul. c. 56. 



82 LITERARY HISTORY. 

With the view of surpassing the oratorical fame 
of the latter, he undertook, as Quintilian relates,* 
a criticism on his eloquence and style. His son, 
Asinius Gallus, also assisted in the task. The in- 
fluence and esteem enjoyed by Pollio at Rome being 
great, it is not astonishing that many were induced 
to follow his example, and pursue the path pointed 
out by him, and always the more, too, as the grace 
and elegance of Cicero became by degrees forgotten. 
The circumstances of the times also assisted strongly 
to this result ; as, for any one to avow himself a 
follower or imitator of a person whose name neces- 
sarily carried reproach to Augustus for the supreme 
authority he had usurped — of one whose death he 
had permitted, or perhaps desired, — was not a thing, 
as has already been observed, which could be es- 
teemed grateful to that Prince. Such considera- 
tions, then, induced the writers of that period to 
avoid an imitation of Cicero, or an avowal of his 
merits, preferring instead the example of Pollio and 
others, his followers. But the other sciences par- 
took not of the decay which affected the eloquence 
of the Forum during the lifetime of Augustus. 
These, as has been illustrated in the preceding 
sections, had now arrived at a perfection to which 
they had never previously been brought. After 

* Lib. xii. c. 1. 



AUGUSTUS. 83 

the Roman Republic, debilitated by the sanguinary 
civil wars that had desolated it, so long happily sub- 
mitted to the salutary dominion of Augustus, his 
first care, and the object he kept most constantly in 
view, was to cause peace, justice, and the laws 
everywhere to reign, and, at the same time, to pro- 
mote by every means the common felicity and pro- 
sperity. His reign happily endured 57 years, and 
was a season of order and general prosperity to the 
whole Roman empire ; whence, it is not astonishing 
that the sciences and letters also florished so highly, 
as these necessarily depend on the public prosperity 
for theirs ; and had the successors of Augustus pur- 
sued a course similar to his, this happy state of 
letters w r ould have continued ; but after his death 
unhappily a very different scene was opened. Four 
emperors successively ascended the throne, of whom 
it is only difficult to define winch was the most de- 
praved. Augustus had always left free the mind, 
nor had the freedom of his writings ever proved 
fatal to any one ; but the scene changed under 
Tiberius and his successors ; and we may here inquire 
into their feelings and disposition towards literature. 
Tiberius, the adopted son and successor of August us. 
ascended the throne in the year 766 of Rome, cor- 
responding to the 14th of the Christian era, in the 
55th year of his age. In early life part of his time 
had been carefully employed in study, and the elo- 



84 LITERARY HISTORY. 

quence displayed in several of his harangues before 
the senate and judges, in various causes, had acquired 
for him more than ordinary applause. A lyric 
poem of his, on the subject of the death of Julius 
Caesar, and some composed by him in the Greek 
language, are also mentioned by Suetonius.* All 
this contributed to induce a reasonable hope that 
the reign of this prince should prove equally favor- 
able to literature as to the republic ; but those 
happy expectations speedily vanished, and Rome 
only found in Tiberius a merciless tyrant, abandoned 
besides to the most execrable and enormous vices - 
Literature or science proved but a useless shelter 
against his cruelty, and many dreadful examples 
were exhibited of learned men unjustly condemned 
by him to death on the slightest pretexts, under cir- 
cumstances of the most cruel injustice. 

Caius, surnamed Caligula, a youth of twenty-five 
years of age, succeeded" Tiberius in the year a. d. 
37- He was son to the celebrated Germanicus, and 
had cultivated much his oratorical talents, for which 
Nature had endowed him both with a copious flu- 
ency and an excellent memory, along with a voice 
at once powerful and harmonious. The reign of 



In Lib. c. 70. 



CLAUDIUS, 



85 



Caligula proved, however, not less disastrous to 
literature than that of his predecessor, and the cru- 
elties he exercised on those who professed the sci- 
ences or letters, were unhappily but of too frequent 
occurrence. His death in the year 41 a. c. by the 
hands of the tribune of the Pretorian guards, had 
occasioned an universal jubilee in Rome, from the 
expectation then entertained of a return to the for- 
mer freedom of government ; but those hopes were 
destroyed by the election of Claudius, uncle of Ca- 
ligula, and brother to Germanicus, whom the Pre- 
torian band now saluted Emperor. Imbecile and 
incapable himself of government, Claudius transfer- 
red the weight of it to others, and unfortunately, too, 
for Rome, to the very worst persons that their times 
could furnish ; but what may excite surprise is, that 
he showed not a little inclination for the Belles Let- 
tres. A Greek comedy of his, written after his elec- 
tion to the empire, he caused to be represented at 
Naples ; and composed also several books on Roman 
history, as Suetonius relates, besides a very learned 
apology for Cicero, against the criticisms of Asinius 
Gallus. His other compositions were two histories 
in the Greek Language ; the one of the Etruscans, 
divided into twenty books ; the other of the Cartha- 
ginians, divided into eight. Had talent been united 
to his learning, his reign might have proved one of 
the most favorable for the sciences and letters, but 



8(j LITERARY HISTORY. 

imbecile as lie was, they derived no advantage 
thence, nor was it, in fact, less cruel and tyrannic 
than those of either of his predecessors. 

Nero, the adopted son of Claudius, succeeded him 
on the throne in the year a. d. 54. With the ex- 
ception of some praise-worthy actions, performed at 
the commencement of his reign, it again left not a 
single example of cruelty or barbarity unperformed. 
In early life Nero had, however, acquired the ele- 
ments of almost all the sciences, and some orations 
of his, composed at that period, partly in Latin, and 
partly in Greek, are mentioned by Suetonius as well 
as by Tacitus;* but it was to Poetry in peculiar 
that his taste seemed directed, and Suetonius affirms, 
that he really possessed the talent of quickness and 
facility in poetical composition. His efforts in poetry 
only served, however, to render the tyrant yet more 
detestable to his subjects. What spectacle could 
be more unworthy of the majesty and gravity of the 
Roman character, than that of an emperor boasting 
as loudly of his presumed excellence in versification, 
and performance on the lyre, as of the most solemn 
triumph ? Commanding that his verses should be 
studied and exposed as models of perfect poetry in 
the public schools ; employing men to recite them 



f Annal. lib. xii. c. 58. 



VESPASIAN'. 87 

throughout Rome, and treating as guilty of treason 
all those who testified any disapprobation of them ; 
and, finally, mounting himself the stage to assist in 
the representation of tragedy and comedy? His 
institution of quinquennial combats in Oratory and 
Poetry, celebrated on the Capitoline Hill, and call- 
ed thence the Capitoline, might appear at first sight 
advantageous to letters : but the only apparent fruit 
thence derived, was the prostitution of their time 
and talents by all the competitors, whether orators 
or poets, to the adulation of the emperor, and to 
yielding him the preference. After thirteen years 
of reign, Nero finally perished by his own hand, in 
the year a. d.68, and 32d of his age, on intelligence of 
the insurrection of Galba and decree of the Senate, 
which had denounced him as a public enemy ; and 
in his person ended the family of the Caesars. 

The brief reigns of the three succeeding emperors, 
Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, could influence but 
slightly, either favorably or unfavorably, the litera- 
ture of the time ; they were accompanied, besides, 
by the scourge of sanguinary civil wars. But after 
the dreadful reigns of Tiberius and his successors, 
the empire finally obtained, under Vespasian, an 
interval of repose. This prince, born in a village of 
the Sabines, at a short distance from Rome, of a 
respectable but not illustrious family, had already 
proved himself an able general, and in every respect 



88 LITERARY HISTORY. 

worthy of the throne, when raised to the empire.* 
Placing before his eyes the enormous vices of his 
predecessors, he set himself the example of all the 
opposite virtues, and extended the most liberal pro- 
tection to the arts and sciences. The short reign of 
his son, Titus, who succeeded him on the throne in 
70. was equally propitious to letters. The admirable 
virtues with which this prince, called the love and 
delight of the human race, was adorned, cannot yet 
be contemplated without a tender feeling of regard. 
Naturally gifted with excellent abilities, he had di- 
rected them to an assiduous study of the Greek and 
Latin Languages, composing not less elegantly in 
verse than prose. From one, then, who, when 
elevated to the throne, suffered himself not to be 
dazzled by the splendor of his station, but appeared 
placed there solely to study the happiness of his 
fellow-men, Literature had naturally looked for great 
protection and encouragement, but, unhappily, after 
two years of reign alone, Titus expired amidst the 
universal plaint and sorrow, cut off, as was generally 
believed, through means of poison, administered by 
Domitian, his brother and successor. Domitian 
proved himself a new monster, more cruel, even, or 
at least more implacable than any of his predeces- 



* In 69, a. d. 



TRAJAN. 88 

rs, and that was sufficient to cause the arts and 
sciences to lie neglected. We find, however, two 
things effected by him for their advantage ; the one 
the renewal of the literary contests of the Campi- 
doglio, previously instituted by Nero, and the esta- 
blishment at the same time of similar, annual, games 
at Alba ; the other the re-construction of the libra- 
ries which had been burnt or dispersed, and collect- 
ing thence a large number of books ; but aids such 
as these availed but little where the cruelty and 
tyranny of the government held enslaved and op- 
pressed the mind. It continued thus until the 
slaughter of Domitian in 96, finally introduced, after 
so many barbarities and horrors, a new and happier 
order of things to Rome, by the elevation of Nerva 
to the empire. 

The successor to Domitian, a prince endowed 
with all the finest qualities of the mind, enjoyed but a 
brief rule, dying sixteen months only after his ascen- 
sion to the throne. Happily, however, he had pre- 
viously adopted Trajan as his successor ; and the 
character of this prince united all the qualities essen- 
tial to a great sovereign and a great general. Every 
historian concurs in celebrating the military as well 
as political virtues of Trajan ; nor ought it to be 
omitted that the arts and sciences stood in a great 
degree indebted to him. Though not versed him- 
self in letters or the fine arts, he perfectly compre- 



90 LITERARY HISTORY. 

hended the duty imposed on every wise monarch to 
favor in every mode literature and the learned ; for 
his conduct in this respect he is highly extolled by 
Pliny in his Panegyric, and commended for the 
kindness conferred upon the learned, and the pro- 
tection bestowed on the sciences, which, under him, 
seemed to have retaken their ancient life and spirit. 
The wars, however, in which he was involved in 
Dacium and the east, and which retained him so 
long absent from the seat of empire, permitted him 
not to afford that encouragement to letters which 
more peaceful times might have allowed. 

Adrian, who, adopted by Trajan, succeeded him 
in 117, cultivated successfully himself the sciences 
and general literature. That of Greece he held in 
peculiar esteem, but also made an assiduous study 
of the Latin language, not resting until he had 
become in it an eloquent as well as fluent speaker. 
He studied almost every science, and acquired fame 
in the composition both of verse and prose. This 
ardor of the emperor for literary study caused the 
highest hopes to be conceived for the increasing 
advancement of literature ; but those expectations 
were frustrated by the circumstance that Adrian, 
proud of his own knowledge, tolerated unwillingly 
any one who bore the reputation of being superior to 
himself. Apparently, indeed, he befriended litera- 
ture and the sciences, but his favor only served to 



POETRY. 91 

allure adulators, and, besides, the constant joum 
he undertook, visiting almost every province of the 
empire, permitted him not to bestow much encour- 
agement on the letters or arts of Italy or Rome, 
where he resided but for a very limited period. He 
died in a.d. 138. 

Such were the rulers who occupied the throne of 
the Roman empire down to the period of which we 
now speak. The ardor for the study of the sciences, 
excited in the times of Augustus, had gradually 
decreased under succeeding emperors, but had not 
yet altogether disappeared, and still in some measure 
survived ; those, in fact, who lived at this era had 
been born in the Augustan age of Roman lite- 
rature, and received their earliest instructions from 
the great men who florished then, and had derived 
thence that noble zeal for general studies which yet 
prevailed in Rome. There existed, also, at this 
period, many who cultivated ornamental literature 
not less than severer sciences. But we may now 
proceed to a detail of all those who florished from 
the epoch of Augustus down to that of Adrian, in 
each department of literature separately, and adher- 
ing to the same arrangement that has been previously 
observed. 

Among the poets who florished after the death 
of Augustus, the first notice is due to one whose 
birth, virtues, and perhaps also knowledge, entitle 



92 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



him to the very highest rank in the list, though but 
little of his poetry has descended to our age. This 
is the celebrated Germanicus, who had been des- 
tined to ascend the throne, but whose premature 
death had excited the universal regret of the Roman 
people, on account of the virtues by which his character 
was so exalted. He was son to Drusus, the brother 
of Tiberius, and consequently nephew to the latter, 
by whom he had been adopted. He was elder brother 
to Claudius, the father of Caligula, and uncle to 
Nero, all three emperors, but all as unworthy of the 
empire as Germanicus, who never reached the 
sceptre, merited to hold it. 

The character which ancient writers have ascribed 
to Germanicus, occasions even yet a fond feeling 
of regard at the mention of his name. His military 
services in Germany and the east proved his merits 
as a great general. "It is known to every one, 11 
says Suetonius,* " that he possessed all the gifts, 
both personal and mental, to an equal extent, per- 
haps, to what any other ever has enjoyed, a more 
than ordinary share of personal beauty and worth, 
excellent talents for the study of Greek, not less than 
of Latin, eloquence, singular affability, and the highest 
success in acquiring the love and esteem of all. 11 



* In Calig. c. 3. 



POETRY 






Not lees warm are the encomiums of Tacitus.* 
The death by which he was carried off, at the early 
age of 34, at Antioch, in the year a.d.20, was gene- 
rally ascribed to the jealousy of the cruel Tiberius 
The universal grief and consternation which the in- 
telligence of this event occasioned in Rome is, per- 
haps, unequalled within the whole range of ancient 
history. Of the orations and Greek comedies of 
Germanicus nothing is now extant, but we may 
learn from Tacitus*f* that his character, as an orator, 
stood high, since that annalist relates that it had 
been determined in Rome, upon information of his 
death, to place his portrait, of a more than usual size, 
and highly adorned, among those of the most illus- 
trious orators ; but the envious Tiberius would not 
permit the execution of the project. Some Greek 
epigrams, attributed to Germanicus, are found in 
the Greek Anthology ; and some to which his name 
is affixed are published in the collections of the 
ancient Latin poets, and particularly in that of 
Piteus. The best and most ample labor of Germa- 
nicus which has reached us, though greatly defective 
and curtailed, is his translation into Latin verse of 
the Oa/vo/xsva of Aratus, and of the Prognostics, 
drawn from the same author, and other Greek poets ; 



* Annal. lib. ii. c. 72. + Annal. lib. ii. c 83. 



94 LITERARY HISTORY. 

but some fragments alone are now extant of the 
latter. His poetry does not exhibit that species of 
bombast and overwrought refinement which is per- 
ceived in the later poets, and on that account he is 
placed by many among the writers of the golden age, 
although his time touched upon that of Tiberius. 

Lucan was the first to exhibit the degeneracy of 
style which has been adverted to. He was a Spa- 
niard by birth, born at Corduba, a buc brought at 
only eight months of age to Rome, where he passed 
the remainder of his life, and may thus, from the 
circumstances of having always lived in Italy, and 
dying there, be justly classed among Italian writers. 
Lucan first acquired celebrity in Rome by his poe- 
tic talents during the reign of Nero, who, as has 
been already detailed, instituted those solemn lite- 
rary combats, called the Campidoglian, celebrated 
quinquennially; in which, after the recitation of their 
verses or orations in the public theatre, by the poets 
or orators who entered the lists, the crown was 
awarded to the successful competitor by judges 
selected for the purpose. On one such celebration, 
Nero, who eagerly coveted a great fame as poet, 
and superiority to Ins competitors, recited his verses 
in opposition to those of Lucan, and had the palm 
of victory adjudged him. Indignant, however, that 

a The modern Cordova. 



POET in , 9H 

Rome should contain one bold enough to com- 
pete with him in poetic merit, the tyrant forbade 
Lucan the future publication of his poetry. Irritated 
by such a prohibition, and unable to repress his 
feelings, the poet entered into the conspiracy which 
Piso was then forming against the Emperor ; this 
conspiracy, however, being discovered, Lucan was 
condemned to suffer along with the other conspi- 
rators. The unhappy poet thus finished his career 
in 65, when only in his 27th year. Of the many 
poetical works attributed to Lucan, his Pharsalia 
is now alone extant. There are not a few writers, 
ancient as well as modern, who have extolled this 
epic in the warmest terms ; but there are also many 
who have there detected most conspicuous vices 
and defects. That its author was a poet of verv 
great genius remains unquestionable ; but, besides 
that, his poem was produced at an early period of 
his life, and before his talents were matured, it oc- 
curred to him as it had done to the orators who 
succeeded Cicero ; in their ambition to surpass the 
great orator, they spoiled and corrupted the art of 
eloquence. Virgil, again, had produced the most 
perfect epic poem of which Latin literature could 
ever boast, but Lucan, urged by the vivacity of his 
talent, in undertaking a similar work, attempted to 
surpass his model, and from that very ambition fell 
into a style not only inflated and bombastic, but 



96 LITERARY HISTORY. 

partaking of many additional blemishes and defects ; 
forgetting that he should have proved a better poet 
had lie sought to imitate rather than surpass the 
iEneid. 

Three other epic poets now succeeded Lucan, viz. 
Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus. From 
the pen of the first we have a poem on the cele- 
brated Argonautic expedition ; but not entire, as 
either the poet had been unable ta complete the 
work, or the last part of it has been lost ; but who- 
ever turns from the pages of the ^Eneid to those of 
the epic of Flaccus, seems to pass from an embel- 
lished and luxuriant garden into a sterile and de- 
serted field ; and Flaccus may be included in the 
list of those who have attempted to become poets in 
spite of Nature. 

Statius, a Neapolitan by birth, had derived from 
Nature a happier talent for poetry. He received, 
at an early age ? the crown in the poetic games or 
combats at Naples, and afterwards three times en- 
joyed a similar triumph in the games celebrated at 
Alba. In those also instituted by Nero in Rome, 
and at a later period renewed by Domitian, Sta- 
tius again obtained the crown through the merit of 
his verses, and enjoyed the honor, at the same 
time, of sitting at the supper-table of that Emperor. 
He died in 96, aged only 35. From his pen we 
have the Five Books of the Silvae, otherwise dif- 



POETRY. J)7 

ferent poems on various occasions, and some of them 
in fact composed extempore ; the Thebaic!, an epic 
poem, and the three first books of another work, 
entitled Achilleis, which, however, he found himself 
unable to complete. Statius was a poet of great 
talent, but infected with the vice common to that 
age, of wishing to ascend too high, and it has been 
remarked of him, that Statius would have approached 
nearer Virgil had he not attempted to surpass him. 
Grace, tenderness, and sweetness, are properties un- 
known to him.* The applause which the Thebaid 
acquired at that day in Rome, acquaints us suffi- 
ciently with the universal corruption which then 
prevailed. The Silvae, composed with less effort, 
and therefore more consonant to Nature, are equal 
to the best productions of Statius. 

The last of the epic poets of that age is Silius 
Italicus.*)* From the copious notice which Pliny the 
younger has given of him, we learn that he was 
consul the year in which Nero died ; had been with 
great credit proconsul in Asia ; was very friendly to 
studies of every kind; possessed many villas, adorned 
with books, statues, and pictures ; had a great vene- 

* The very beautiful translation into Italian, which the Cardi- 
nal Bentvoglio has given us of the Thebaid, under the name of 
Selvaggio Porpora, has rendered that poem more delightful to study, 
as by the elegance and clearness of the Italian idiom, he has cor- 
rected the bombast and obscurity of the Latin, Barbacovi. 

+ Born about a. d. 15, but whether in Italy or Spain, is disputed. 

E 



98 LITERARY HISTORY. 

ration for Virgil, whose natal day lie was wont to 
celebrate with greater splendor than his own ; and 
that, finally arrived at his 75th year, and tormented 
by incurably bad health, in abstaining from all food, 
he voluntarily destroyed himself at one of his villas 
near Naples, in the early part of the reign of Tra- 
jan. From him we have the poem on the second 
Carthaginian war ; a work, however, both weak and 
languid, and no one has expressed thetrue character 
of Italicus better than Pliny, when asserting that he 
formed his verses with greater labor than talent.*" 
Nothing grand, pathetic, or imaginative, is to be 
met with in his pages ; but from the epic we may 
pass to the other poets, and commence with Petro- 
nius Arbiter. 

The satires of Petronius belong to the Menippean 
class ; in other words, they are prose intermixed 
occasionally with verses of various metres. A small 
part only of his compositions are now extant, and 
even those so mangled and curtailed, that the rela- 
tion frequently fails, and the sense is vainly to be 
sought for in several places. These compositions, 
though they have found some ardent admirers, are 
throughout scarcely anything but a coarse and dis- 
gusting picture of vileness and obscenity, but such 
vices sometimes are exactly what gratify a certain 

* Epist. lib. 3. 



POETRY. 99 

dan of readers. Tlie country of Petronius, the pre- 

S age in which he lived, and many other qm 
tions relative to him have been disensfted among the 
learned, and are diffusely treated of by Tiraboschi,* 
but on these it is probably unnecessary to dwell. 

The name of Aulus Persius Flaccus is more 
worthy of being commemorated. From the life of 
this poet, found in the works of Suetonius, we learn 
that he was born in Yolterra, 3, of an illustrious 
family ; that he enjoyed the friendship of the most 
celebrated men of his time ; was a person of ami- 
able manners, and endowed with all the most inte- 
resting qualities of the heart ; but died while yet 
only in his 30th year. Besides some other compo- 
sitions mentioned by the writer of his life, he di- 
rected his attention peculiarly to the study of satire, 
and his productions in this class are now alone ex- 
tant. Quintiliairf- highly commends our author ; but 
of modern writers, while some not only assent to his 
opinion, but, going farther, assert that Persius may 
dispute the crown of satiric poetry with Horace, and 
the more so on account of the briefness of his career, 
— others again censure him for obscurity. In this 
diversity of opinion, it is at least certain that Per- 
>iu< is viciously obscure, and much inferior to Ho- 

• Storia del. Lett. Ital. vol. iii. c. 2. 
+ Instit. Orat. lib. 10, c. 1. 
e In a.d. 32. 



100 LITERARY HISTORY. 

race, precisely on account of his effort to be superior. 
In his endeavour to imitate the latter, however, he 
betrays a desire to be more pointed and precise, and 
consequently becomes, on the contrary, obscure. It 
is notwithstanding certain, that the satires of Per- 
sius abound with the finest sentiments, and these, 
too, frequently very forcibly expressed. 

In succession to Persius, Juvenal may be noticed, 
not on account of equality of date, but of uniformity 
in their class of poetry. This satirist was born in 
Aquinum, recognised by himself as his birthplace. 
Modern writers there are who prefer him to Persius, 
and even to Horace ; but others, in a very different 
opinion, prefer much the grace and delicacy of the 
latter to the impetuous and passionate declamation 
of Juvenal. 

To the epic and satiric poets of whom we have 
hitherto spoken, now succeeds the only epigram- 
matic writer of that age whose poetry has 
reached us, — this is M. Valerius Martialis, born in 
Spain, a but, from a residence of thirty-five years in 
Italy, where he composed and published his epi- 
grams, included among Italian w r riters. In his own 
age, Martial enjoyed at Rome a high reputation as 
a poet ; but in the 16th century, when good taste 
reigned in Italy, he was held but in slight estima- 
tion, and considered totally unworthy of comparison 

a About 30. a.d. 



POETRY. 101 

to Catullus.* It canuot be denied, that he has some 
epigrams of a singular beauty, and free from those 
overdrawn conceits and dull plays on words his pages 
too frequently exhibit ; but no one has better decided 
on the character of his verses than Martial himself 
in a well known line.i* 

These were the poets of the times to which we 
are now confined, whose poetry has descended to us ; 
there were many more of the same period, whose 
productions are either entirely lost or very partially 
preserved ; but it is unnecessary, as well as annoy- 
ing, to give a mere catalogue of names. It only now 
remains to enquire into the theatric poetry of that 
epoch. 

Even when Roman literature had reached its per- 
fection in the preceding age, the theatre of Rome 
had continued very inferior to that of Greece. A* 
theatric spectacles were, however, frequent in Rome, 
there were necessarily many writers of dramatic 
poetry, but the only remains of the Latin theatre 
now extant are the ten tragedies which we have 
under the name of Seneca ; though, whether this 
were the rhetorician of that name or the philosopher. 



* There is the noted 6tory of the sacrifice that the celebrated 
Andrea Xavagero annually made of some copies of this poet, by 
consigning them to the flames Barbacovi. 

+ Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plunk 



102 LITERARY HISTORY. 

his son, or some one of the same name different from 
both, is disputed among the learned. But, whoever 
the author may be, many are the faults for which 
he is condemned. He wants nature, probability, 
uniformity of character, tenderness of feeling, con- 
trast of passion, and management of accident, and 
is besides justly blamed for that declamatory style, 
that pedantic air, that superfluity of words and ex- 
pressions, and vain ostentation of wit in which he so 
frequently indulges. But his tragedies, notwith- 
standing, and particularly the Medea, Hippolytus. 
and Troas, exhibit also tragic situations, strokes of 
ingenious dialogue, elevated and sublime thoughts, 
truly profound sentences, and really beautiful verses; 
and should they not merit being considered models 
of tragic poetry, on account of the vices and defects 
they exhibit, they possess at least many redeeming 
qualities. Quintilian has pronounced a very accu- 
rate judgment on this author.* 

Besides tragedy, the ancient theatre had other 
poetic compositions, with which to vary its perform- 
ances, — the Mimes obtained a very favorable re- 
ception at Rome, but a true taste in theatric poetry 
never prevailed there, and this occasioned the inferior- 
ity of the Roman to the Greek tragic muse in this de- 



* Multa probanda in eo, multa etiam admiranda sunt : eligere 
modo curse sit, quod utiram ipse fecisset. Lib. x. c. 1. 



POETRY. 103 

partment, both as respected the number and quality of 
itsproductions. At Rome external pomp and splendid 
show were preferred to the beauties of dramatic poetry . 
Even in the age of Augustus, Horace laments that 
the Romans often caused the stage representations 
to be interrupted, to enjoy the combats of bears or 
wrestlers.* Caesar and Augustus, both princes of 
excellent talent, might have effected the introduction 
of a better taste into the theatre, but neither deemed 
it expedient to interfere with the popular taste, and 
were indifferent to reform in the dramatic art. 
Horace seems to hint that at his time even the cor- 
ruption in theatric taste was every day advancing ;-f* 
and, in proceeding to describe the theatric spectacles 
of refined Rome, he acquaints us with the great 
corruption which prevailed in this very interesting 
branch of literature. In the time of Augustus, 
pantomimes also were introduced, and continued 
even afterwards to maintain their ground. Delight- 
ful odors, the richest decorations, ingenious machines, 
and whatever could satisfy the senses and introduce 
agreeable surprise to an idle people, were all em- 



Media inter carmina poscunt 
Aut ursum, aut pugiles : his nam plebecula gaudet. 

Ep. 1. lib. 2. 
+ Verum equitis quoque jam migravit ab aure voluptas, 
Omnis ad incertos oculos et gaudia vana Ep. 1. lib. 2. 



104 LITERARY HISTORY. 

ployed with the most studious care and greatest 
luxury on the Roman stage. The dances, music, 
dresses, scenery, and machinery of the stage, with 
its richness of display, were the objects of attraction 
to the Roman audience, while the beauties of the 
drama or the fineness of its art were held but as 
secondary objects, and this may be assumed as the 
reason why Rome, which in every other species of 
poetry rivalled the glory of Greece, remained so far 
inferior in the dramatic, and why the country which 
re-produced a Homer and a Pindar, could reckon 
neither an Eschylus, Sophocles, nor Euripides. 



105 



SECTION VI. 

TIXUATIOX OF THE PRECEDING SECTION. 

The eloquence of the Forum, carried by Cicero 
to its highest point of excellence, has been already 
remarked to have commenced its decay from the 
epoch of Augustus, and the causes of this decline 
e been adduced in a preceding section. A new 
form of eloquence was introduced, the value of which 
consisted in an aftected refinement of thought, an 
immoderate use of subtilties, and an air of the mar- 
vellous, under which even the most ordinary ideas 
were disguised. Its very novelty, however, assisted 
to insure it a favorable reception ; all were delight- 
ed to travel in the new path they saw opened be- 
fore them, and the more so that it appeared of a 
more difficult character, and consequently more ho- 
norable to excel in than that which their predecessor- 
had trodden. 

That tin- was the >tate of eloquence in Rome at 
the time of which we speak, is sufficiently proved 



100 LITERARY HISTORY. 

to us by the writings of that date which are yet 
extant, and especially those of Seneca the rhetori- 
cian. Seneca was a native of Cordova in Spain, but 
spent the greatest part of his life in Rome. He 
acquired the title of Rhetorician from the works 
which lie published, and to distinguish him from his 
son and namesake the philosopher. 

He has left us the treatise Suasorie, otherwise 
orations, so to say, of a deliberative kind, where 
an argument being taken from some historical or 
fabulous fact, some one is introduced to deliberate 
as to the course proper to be pursued in it. We 
have besides from him the fragments of ten books 
of Controversies five of which alone have reached 
us entire. In this work, causes on the model of 
those treated of in the Forum, or before the tribu- 
nals, are discussed, and the sentiments and ideas pro- 
per to them are exhibited ; but these works afford a 
striking example of the declining and corrupted 
taste which then prevailed. Some expressions pos- 
sessing both dignity and force are certainly met with, 
but overladen by the subtilties and conceits that 
continually recur. There is scarcely a single stroke 
of true or sound eloquence, nor a single free or natu- 
ral description or relation, nor one passage calcu- 
lated to excite feeling of any kind. 

Less censurable, and even entitled to praise, is 
Quintilian, although not altogether exempt from the 



ELOQUENT!,. 107 

reigning vices of the time, which he knew not to 
avoid. It is disputed among the learned whether 
hv were a Spaniard or Italian by birth, but as it is 
at least certain that he passed the greatest part of his 
life in Rome, it becomes allowable to include him in 
the list of Italian writers. He opened a public school 
of rhetoric at Rome towards the year 68, and con- 
tinued this laborious employment, as he assure- 
lnmself, for upwards of twenty years, when, having 
retired from public teaching, he undertook the pub- 
lication of those rides and precepts he had inculcated 
in the school, producing the great work Institu- 
tiones Oratorice. He appears to have been a 
person of the most excellent character, gifted with 
all the moral virtues ; and the onlv stain which 
can be attached to his name is that of having 
basely adulated Domitian, and lavished praises on 
an emperor who had rendered himself the object 
of general execration ; but this was a fault from 
which scarcely any writer of that time was exempt. 
In his style, he possesses not the purity and clear- 
ness of Cicero, and the writers of the August 
age ; and although, being himself finely acquainted 
with its true beauty, he studied to avoid that cur- 
tailed and affected style which prevailed so exten- 
sively in the writings of the authors of his age, he 
sometimes fell into the same bad taste, and tails to 



108 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



give to his orations that charm, dignity, or flow 
which he so often commends himself in Cicero. 

Quintilian, notwithstanding, may be considered 
as the most truly Roman writer of his age, and the 
one possessing most peculiarly the characteristics of 
the authors of the golden age of Roman literature. 
As regards, too, the didactic part of his work, it 
has ever stood the admiration of the learned for a 
fulness and perfection which leave nothing to be 
desired, — for the order and method that reign 
throughout — the justness and utility of the precepts, 
and the strength and perspicuity of the reasoning. 
It is from the combination of all those qualities that 
the Oratorical Institutions of Quintilian will main- 
tain its authority in all ages as the most complete 
code ever published of the laws of good taste, and 
of sound and true eloquence. 

C. Plinius Cecilius Secundus, a pupil of Quin- 
tilian's, was son to Lucius Cecilius by a sister of 
Pliny the elder, and Como was his birth-place.* 
Born in a.d. 62, he was transferred, at an early age, 
to Rome ; and being adopted by his maternal uncle 
Pliny, he thence assumed that name. In his 21st 



* The lake near that city still preserves an illustrious monu- 
ment of its celebrated countryman, in the villa now called Plinmna. 
situated on the shores of the lake Barbacovi. 



ELOQUENCE. 109 

year, he commenced to plead in the Forum, but 
ceased not, at the same time, according to Roman 
custom, to continue his military exercises, and held, 
at an early age, the rank of military tribune in 
Syria. Returning to Rome, he obtained there all 
the most honorable stations, being successively made 
Questor, Tribune of the People, Pretor, Consul, 
Superintendant of the Military Treasury, and that 
of Saturn, and finally governor of Bithynia and 
Pontus. For these honors he was principally in- 
debted to the friendship of the emperor Trajan, who 
highly prized his virtues, and endeavoured to re- 
ward them. Retiring afterwards to one of his 
villas, he passed there the remainder of his days in 
tranquillity, and died in his fifty-second year. His 
letters inform us that he lived on friendly terms with 
the most learned and celebrated men of his age, 
and acquaint us, at the same time, with the rare 
and eminent qualities which adorned him. It is 
at least impossible to read them without con- 
ceiving a strong affection and esteem for their 
author, and a certain secret desire to resemble him. 
They present a picture of sincerity, disinterested 
feeling, gratitude, frugality, modesty, fidelity to 
friendships, detestation of vice, and ardent love of 
virtue. Their author, too, was at once an un- 
wearied student and a generous patron of literature. 
The proof of this is found in those letters where he 



110 LITERARY HISTORY. 

incessantly exhorts and stimulates others to study, 
exhibiting the advantages and honors derivable 
from it. His liberality in this respect was peculi- 
arly beneficial to his countrymen of Como, in in- 
ducing them to bestow an annual salary, of which 
he promised to contribute a third part, for the sup- 
port of a public professor. Nor did his liberality 
toward his birth-place pause here, as we find him 
next instituting a public library there. Pliny had 
written poetry, both in Latin and Greek, to a large 
extent ; he had besides delivered several orations in 
the causes on which he pleaded, as he mentions him- 
self; but all that we have now of his are the ten 
books of letters and the celebrated panegyric on 
Trajan. In the letters he uses a refined and elegant 
style, but still remote from the graceful natural- 
ness of Cicero. Pliny is more than necessarily 
concise and forced, the fault, indeed, common to 
that age, in which, as has been already frequently 
observed, it was wished to carry things to a greater 
perfection than they could suitably bear. In the 
Panegyric there are not a few noble thoughts, grand 
ideas, and sublime expressions, to be admired ; but 
it is almost throughout infested by the then pre- 
vailing disease of a love of emphasis, subtilty, and 
novelty. The tones of nature and simplicity are 
altogether banished from his style ; point and 
conceit are substituted instead. There is a studied 



HISTORY. Ill 

display of wit, and an air of the marvellous and 
surprising attempted to be thrown over all, whence 
the majesty and force of the oration are lost in its 
affectation. As the Panegyric of Pliny, however, 
still possesses an elegance and polish of language, 
and is aided by the real greatness which the hero 
of whom it treats assists to invest it with, besides 
that of the deeds celebrated in its pages, and con- 
tains passages having sentiments and ideas of an 
elevated character, and admirable force, it cannot 
be read without a feeling of admiration and delight. 
These are the only samples of the eloquence of those 
times that have reached us, though many other 
orators, more or less celebrated, florished in the 
<ame age, whose works no longer exist. 

The number of the historians of this age was not, 
perhaps, inferior to that in the preceding ; but the 
same defects noticed in the poets and orators are 
also met with in their works, particularly an ex- 
cessive sententiousness of language, an affected pre- 
cision, and hence a troublesome and frequently 
unintelligible obscurity of style. These vices were 
produced in this as in the other branches of litera- 
ture by a desire to surpass rather than imitate the 
excellent historians of the preceding age, and an am- 
bition to display a greater ingenuity and acateness. 
The first in the number of this class of writers 
whose works are vet extant is C. Velleius Pater- 



112 LITERARY HISTORY. 

culus. a He was descended from an illustrious family 
of Naples, and having embraced the military pro- 
fession, was engaged in several of the wars which 
occurred in Germany during the reigns of Augustus 
and Tiberius, obtaining their honorable employ- 
ments. Nor was he without civil honors, having 
held the rank of Questor and Tribune of the People, 
and that of Pretor. From his pen we have two 
books of history, the first of which is greatly want- 
ing, the second brings down the history of Rome 
to the 16th year of Tiberius. His style has the 
previously noticed faults of that age, and, conse- 
quently becomes frequently obscure. He wants not 
energy nor force, but misapplies both, and scatters 
superfluous sentences, as the writers of the time 
were wont. 

Valerius Maximus was cotemporary with Pater- 
culus. He compiled a work, divided into nine 
books, of Memorabilia, extracted from Roman and 
foreign history. Many doubt whether this work 
has reached us in the condition in which he left it, 
and not rather as a mere compendium, formed by 
another hand. It is at least certain, however, that 
in the work we now have, the style of this author 
is in many places rude and unpolished, besides 
sharing in the faults common to the writers of that 

a Born about b.c. 20. 



HISTORY. 



LIS 



B, of a vicious affectation in the use of expi 
and conceits, to produce an appearance of cleveni- 
and a style frequently intricate and obscure. He 
is, besides, censured for having, without due discrimi- 
nation, added to his collection several tilings sup- 
ported only by popular tradition. 

Quintus Curtius, who wrote the History of Alex- 
ander the Great, is included by some among the 
historical writers of this age ; but the opinions of 
the learned vary much with respect to his person, 
and the time in which he lived. Without entering 
into this question, it may be remarked, that Curtius 
uses a polished, elegant, and flowery style, although 
not always equal to himself. But even he some- 
times betrays the vices of a decaying Latinity, with- 
out, however, allowing himself to be carried away 
by the ambition of appearing brilliant, the fault com- 
mon to the writers of that period. 

But by far the most eminent historian of this age 
is C. Cornelius Tacitus, native of Terni. a He was 
raised by various emperors to the most conspicuous 
offices and dignities of the state, as he mentions 
himself that of Pretor, which he held under Domi- 
tian ; he also received from Nerva the higher honor 
of the Consulship, to which he was elected by the 
wish of that Emperor, on the death of the celebrated 



a Bom about 60 a.d. But the exact date of his birth, and posi- 
tion of hi6 birth place, generally considered uncertain. 



114 LITERARY HISTORY. 

Consul, Virginius Rufus, in 97. A strong friendship 
subsisted between him and Pliny the younger, whose 
high esteem for the historian is testified by many of 
his letters.* We have from Tacitus two histories 
of the Roman Emperors. To the first he gave the 
name of annals, because there the events related are 
arranged in exact chronological order. It com- 
mences with the death of Augustus, and terminates 
at that of Nero, but many of the books are unfor- 
tunately lost. The other, to which he gave the 
name of History, because it preserved not the same 
chronological arrangement, commences at the reign 
of Galba, and reaches to the death of Domitian ; 
but of this, also, only a small part has reachedus, viz. : 
the first four books and a portion of the fifth. From 
the pen of Tacitus we have also a treatise, entitled 
" De Moribus Germanorum ;" and a memoir of 
his father-in-law, Julius Agricola. Perhaps no wri- 
ter has ever appeared, relative to whom a greater 
number of expositors and interpreters have exer- 
cised their pens, than upon this historian. His 
principal merit is, that not content with a bare re- 
cital of events, he examines into their causes, un- 
folds their secret circumstances, marks their causes, 
and elucidates their eifects ; in fine, brings analysis 
to every fact, and assumes the character of a philo- 
sophical historian. These rare properties, in the 

* Lib i. Ep. 6, 20, &c. 



HISTORY. 11/) 

merits of which all must acquiesce, have rendered 
Tacitus the tool of all who covet reputation as pro- 
found politicians or thinkers, and the celebrated 
D'Alembert hesitated not to affirm, that he was 
without comparison the greatest historian of all an- 
tiquity. The Abbe Andres is, however, of a differ- 
ent opinion ; " accustomed," says he, " to the clear- 
ness and grace of Caesar, to the full and robust gra- 
vity of Sallust, to the majestic richness and harmony 
of Livy, we cannot equally relish the sometimes ob- 
scure and difficult conciseness of Tacitus . . . D'Alem- 
bert considers Tacitus unequalled in the energy, 
fineness, and truth of his portraitures, in the pathos 
displayed in the relation of affecting events, and in 
the depth of feeling shown in the mention of vir- 
tues ; but in Livy I find these pictures much more 
forcible and vivid .... How often is not the pathe- 
tic manner, so highly lauded in Tacitus, found to 
fail in the narration of the most touching incidents ? 
What tender tears would not the death of Germa- 
nicus, if related by Livy, have produced, whilst, in 
the words of Tacitus, it remains in part but a cold 
and dry description ? How much deeper a feeling 
of hoiTor should not Livy have thrown into the 
narrative of the attempted crime of Agrippina with 
Nero ? Tacitus ought not then to be asserted the 
greatest historian of all antiquity, but it is sufficient 
to allow him the merit of force, precision, and depth, 



116 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



with the glory of being acknowledged the histo- 
rian of philosophers and the instructor of politi- 
cians." 

Cotemporary with Tacitus was Caius Suetonius 
Tranquillus. After the great histories of Livy and 
Tacitus, that of Suetonius is only studied on account 
of the notices it affords, which have an interest to 
the learned, and not for the manner in which they 
are presented, nor any property of historical elo- 
quence they possess. The works composed by Sueto- 
nius were many and of various materials, but those 
by which he chiefly acquired celebrity, were the 
lives of the twelve Caesars ; lives which seem writ- 
ten not so much to afford information respecting 
their times, as to present us with a picture of the 
characters and manners of the then reigning Em- 
perors. All ancient writers have recognised in 
Suetonius an historian of veracity, and worthy of 
credit wherever the marvellous, in which he suffered 
himself to be led away by vulgar opinion, is sepa- 
rated from his narrative. As to his style, it has the 
merit of being free from the sententiousness and 
affectation of conceit of Ins age, but it must also be 
remarked, that it is otherwise but unpolished, that 
he is but a cold and languid narrator, and one to 
whom the title of compilator suits better than that 
of historian. 

The last of the historians of this age, whose works 



HISTORY. 117 

are yet extant, is L. Annaeus Florus. He wrote a 
compendium of the history of Rome, from its found- 
ation down to the reign of Augustus, and not a mere 
abridgement of Livy, as has been imagined by some, 
though the argument of both works may be similar. 
It was composed during the reign of Trajan, as the 
proem to the first book proves ; its style is that com- 
mon to the time, unnecessarily sententious and labor- 
ed, and very remote from the purity of the prece- 
ding age. 

To those historians, whose works have either 
wholly or in a great part descended to us, many 
others that are enumerated by Tiraboschi,* might 
be added, but of their works either nothing or frag- 
ments only have been preserved. Among these 
Cremutius Cordus, however, merits being noticed. 
He had written the annals of Augustus with the 
freedom of an ancient Roman, and among other 
passages, when speaking of Cassius and Brutus, had 
called them the last of the Romans, as if they had 
left behind them none worthy of that name ; he had, 
besides, spoken with a noble scorn of the base and 
degraded state into which the Romans of that age 
had fallen. No further pretext to accuse him be- 
fore Tiberius was wished. Tacitus introduces his 



Stor. del. Lett. Ital. torn. iii. c. 4. 



118 LITERARY HISTORY. 

defence of himself before the Emperor in the senate, 
and with a firmness then but too rarely exhibited. 
" My words," said he, " are accused, because my 
actions are so innocent." Aware, however, of the 
utter inutility of all defence, on return home he vo- 
luntarily destroyed himself, by abstaining from all 
food.* 

The discovery effected, in the last years of the 
Republic, of the works of Aristotle, the honors ren- 
dered by Augustus to various illustrious philosophers, 
and the many natives of Greece who were thence 
induced to fix their residence in Rome, all concurred 
to re-excite in the Roman mind a strong ardor for 
the study of philosophy. The Romans were for the 
most part attached to the Stoical sect, because, as 
has already been observed, that system was deemed 
more peculiarly fitted for guidance in civil or politi- 
cal life as for public government; but after the death 
of Augustus, it received many additional followers 



* A fragment of the annals of Cremutius has been preserved to 
us by Seneca the Rhetor, in which the annalist, after having related 
the death of Cicero, adds the circumstance of the exposure of his 
head upon the rostrum, and thus concludes : — " Praecipue tamen 
solvit pectora omnium in lacrvmas gemitusque visa ad caput ejus 
deligata manus dextera divinae eloquentiae ministra : caeterorum 
caedes privatos luctus excitaverunt ilia una communem." — Bar- 
bacovi. 



PHILOSOPHY. 119 

under the reigns of Tiberius, and the three succeed- 
ing- emperors, from a persuasion that the maxims of 
that philosophy were best calculated to ann the 
mind against the perversity of the times and men, 
as well as to enable it to encounter death with 
courage. 

In noticing separately the most illustrious philo- 
sophers of this age, a who rendered themselves cele- 
brated by their writings, the first who comes before 
us is Lucius Annaeus Seneca. He was son to Seneca 
the elder, who has been already noticed, and born 
at Cordova, but brought, while yet a child, to Italy, 
where he ever afterwards lived, and died. After 
having pursued a course of study in rhetoric, he 
commenced to plead in the Forum, where his suc- 
cess was decided enough to acquire for him public 
honors, and he had already held the rank of Ques- 
tor, when fortune, which had previously been propi- 
tious, became adverse to him. Accused of improper 
conduct with Julia, daughter to Germanicus, and niece 
of the emperor Claudius, he was banishedbythe latter 
to the Island of Corsica, where he spent eight years 
in exile, though the question of his innocence or guilt 
remained uncertain. His recal, however, was effected 
by means of Agrippina, who obtained for him at 



1 Commencing at the first years of the Christian era. 



120 LITERARY HISTORY. 

the same time the situation of preceptor to her son 
Nero ; the office of Pretor was likewise bestowed 
upon him. With the assistance of his colleague, 
the celebrated Afranius Burrus. Seneca was for some 
time successful in restraining* his pupil from tlu 
vices to which a disposition, naturally the most de- 
praved, should otherwise have prompted him. But 
Nero having subsequently broken through every re- 
straint, and abandoned himself to the commission 
of every degrading vice, and the gratification of 
every absurd caprice, his preceptor naturally be- 
coming to him an object of odium and dislike, every 
opportunity to destroy him was Bought for. The 
conspiracy of Pi so presented a favorable pretext for 
this, and Seneca was consequently numbered among 
the guilty. We are left by Tacitus in doubt whe- 
ther or not he actually was concerned in the conspi- 
racy alluded to : but however that might be. Se- 
neca received by a prefect of one of the pra?torian 
bands, a command from Nero to destroy lnmself. 
The philosopher then calmly caused his veins to be 
opened, and encountered death with intrepidi: 
Opinions on the merits of Seneca vary much ; for if 
he has acquired strong eulogy and admiration, he 
has not the less escaped sufficient censure. Jus: 
Lipsius speaks strongly in his favor, and ex: 
virtues in the highest terms ; but other writers, on 
the contrary, speak of him as a hypocrite, who. un- 



PHILOSOPHY . ll!l 

der the deceitful mask of an austere virtue, con- 
cealed the deepest vices, and among the other crimes 
of which he stands accused, appears that of haying 
amassed enormous wealth through every species of 
injustice.* 

But whatever might be the personal character 
of Seneca, it is unquestionable, at least, that his 
moral works contain the finest and most useful pre- 
cepts, and so much so in great part that they migh^ 
be attributed even to a Christian writer, though 
there may be others again only proper to a Pagan 
philosopher, and more particularly to a stoic, to 
which sect Seneca was peculiarly attached. Nor do 
morals alone owe much to this philosopher, but 
many points are found, in which his penetrating 
genius and deep study had enabled him to discern, 
as if from afar, those truths which modern philoso- 
phers have since more clearly laid open and demon- 
strated. Thus he reasons concerning the gravity of 
the air, and the force with which it is either rarefied 
or condensed ; he also states the theory of earth- 
quakes in subterraneous fires, which, after being 
kindled, seek expansion, and in that process cause a 



* The character and manners of Seneca have been amply com- 
mented upon by Tiraboschi, and we have an excellent memoir of 

him from the pen of the celebrated Car. Rosmini Barbacovi. 

F 



122 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



violent agitation to all surrounding parts ; explains 
the method by which the water of the sea, insinua- 
ting itself through hidden subterranean passages, is 
purified and freshened, while it gives birth to the 
fountains and streams ; but the remarks of the phi- 
losopher are peculiarly fine, where, in reasoning of 
comets, he clearly proves that they have a fised, 
determinate course, are visible in the heavens at 
stated epochs, reappearing and disappearing through 
the action of infallible laws. But in the character 
of his style, Seneca is not entitled to equal praise ; 
he seems to prefer speaking with ingenuity to speak- 
ing with exactness. Whence arise the expressions, 
conceits, antithesis, and plays on words, so fre- 
quently met with in his works. His noble ; \rd 
sublime ideas, his solid and profound remarks, wculd 
have possessed a far higher value had their author 
known to clothe them in the order and method, with 
the naturalness and perspicuity of Cicero, whom he 
had himself so often lauded. Seneca, however, plea- 
sed the generality at that time, and, as Quintilian re- 
marks, exactly for the very defects of his style, which 
then had, and has in fact continued to have, not a 
few imitators. 

The character and tenor of life of Caius Plinius, 
called the elder, in distinction from his nephew, Pliny 
the younger, who has been already noticed, was of 
a very different stamp. He was born in the 23d 



PHILOSOPHY. 123 

iv uf the Christian era, but whether at Verona or 
Como, has been a subject of lengthened dispute. 
After having completed his education, he served 
with the army in Germany, and had there charge of 
a squadron of cavalry. On return to Rome, lie 
practised for some time in the Forum. Being after- 
wards sent by Nero into Spain, with the title of 
Procurator, he occupied that office till the second 
year of Vespasian's reign, when, on his recal by that 
prince, he was transferred to the command of the 
fleet, then stationed at the promontory of Misenum ; 
this charge, however, proved fatal to the philosopher. 
Being present with the squadron when Vesuvius, at 
no great distance from the station, commenced to 
discharge a dense vapor, his proximity to the moun- 
tain allowed the hot ashes and heated stones to 
strike the ships, and the sea having at the same 
time been driven back, he found it no longer possi- 
ble to save himself by flight, but perished by suffo- 
cation among the flames and ashes. Thus died 
Pliny, in the year 79 a.d. in the 56th of his age, 
and at the commencement of the reign of Titus. 
His nephew, Pliny the younger,* has given us the 
catalogue of his uncle's works, viz. one relative to 
the method of throwing the dart in cavalry warfare ; 



* Lib. 6. Epist. 17. 



1'24 riTKRARY HISTORY. 

twenty books, comprising a complete history of the 
Roman wars in Germany ; three books on the ora- 
torical art ; eight on grammar ; thirty-one on the 
history of his own times, and finally, the great work 
on natural history. It is astonishing to find one 
person singly undertaking so many and important 
subjects, but the excellent arrangement of his time 
rendered easy to Pliny, what to another would have 
proved impossible. Even while he supped or lay in 
the bath, he caused some work to be, read to him, 
and wrote or dictated notes of such passages as ap- 
peared worthy of comment or reflection. The only 
one of his works now extant is the Natural History, 
divided into thirty-six books, in which every one 
must admire the profound genius and vast erudition 
of its author. A large number of errors and defects 
have, however, been remarked there by some, while 
others again have spoken of the whole work with 
that contempt proper to those who endeavour to ac- 
quire a fame to themselves by depreciating that of 
others. But the blemishes of Pliny are amply com- 
pensated bythe redeeming merits of his work. Itmay 
be sufficient to produce the judgment pronounced in 
his favor by the celebrated BufFon, and no one 
could be more competent than he to judge on such 
a subject. " Pliny," says he, " has labored on a 
much greater field, and one perhaps only too vast ; 
he seems to have measured Nature, embracing it 



PHILOSOPHY. 125 

through its whole extent, and yet to have found it 
all but too limited for the grasp of his mighty intel- 
lect. His Natural History comprises, besides that 
of animals, plants, and minerals, the history of the 
heavens and of earth, medicine, commerce, naviga- 
tion ; that of the liberal and mechanical arts ; the 
origin of the usages of different nations ; in fine, all 
the natural sciences and human arts ; but a thing 
still more surprising is, that Pliny is equally great 
in every part. The sublimity of his ideas, and the 
elevation of his style, throw an additional lustre over 
his profound erudition. The extent of his learning 
included all that the time afforded, while he added 
to the amount of knowledge by his facility of great 
thought, along with that fineness of reflection on 
which elegance and taste depend, while he commu- 
nicates to his readers a certain freedom of mind and 
ardor of thought, which are the germs of philosophy. 1 '' 
As to the style of Pliny, it is characterised neither 
by the elegance "or purity peculiar to the writers of 
the golden age," but is elevated and of more than 
ordinary force and precision ; this latter character- 
istic is frequently indeed carried to an extreme, and 
sometimes throws an air of obscurity into the dis- 
course ; this obscurity, however, arises in great part 
from the introduction of emendations vitiated and 
full of errors, which have afterwards passed into the 
print. 



12() LITERARY HISTORY. 

The works of none of the other philosophers 
of this age have descended to us, as some of them 
indeed signalised their philosophy more by the noble 
circumstances of their death, than by their eminence 
in literature. Among these, Traseas Petus merits 
particular mention, as it is of him that Tacitus 
speaks with the most glowing terms of eulogy in the 
sixteenth book of his u Annals," where he says that 
Nero, after having destroyed so many of the most 
innocent and virtuous among the Romans, thought 
finally to crush virtue itself by the death of Tra- 
seas. 

Astronomy was at that period but little studied 
by the Romans, and a foolish judicial astrology alone 
usurped its place. The astrologers of this time, 
however, and even for many following ages, were 
frequently distinguished by the title of " mathema- 
ticians" — an appellation but too honorable for the pro- 
fessors of an absurd imposture. The only one among 
the Roman writers, who shows himself at all versed 
in mathematics, is Julius Frontinus, a man who ren- 
dered himself illustrious, not in the sciences alone, 
but by his services to the Republic both in a civil 
and military capacity. After having held the pre- 
torship, as we learn from Tacitus,* he was first ap- 



Histor. lib. iv. c. 39. 



MEDICINE. 127 

pointed supplementary consul, and next raised to the 
rank of ordinary consul. Being afterwards sent, 
with the title of proconsul, into Britain, he success- 
fully subjugated the Silures there, as Tacitus again 
informs us. Returning to Rome, he was charged 
by the emperor Nerva, with the superintendance of 
the aqueducts, as he asserts himself;* and, as the 
inscription, which we have in the Raccolta of Mura- 
tori, sufficiently proves. The charge with winch he 
was honored by Nerva, evinces the esteem in which 
he was held ; but a still more certain proof of his 
talents are the two books yet extant, Of the Aque- 
ducts of Rome. From his pen we have also two 
books of military stratagems. Pliny, the younger, 
speaks of Frontinus in warm terms, and rallies him 
on the circumstance of his having succeeded himself 
in the office of augur ; he elsewhere mentions the 
command he left that no sepulchral monument should 
be raised to him after death, asserting it to be but 
an unnecessary expense, and expressing a confidence 
that he should obtain fame with posterity had he 
merited it during life.* 

No sciences had lain more neglected for many ages 
in Rome than the medical ; Celsus alone, in the age 
of Augustus, had illustrated them by his writings; but 



* De Aquaeduc. art. 102. 

•f Memoria nostri durabit, si vitam meruimus. 



128 LITERARY HISTORY. 

his successors, instead of applying themselves to the 
investigation of the origin and nature of diseases, and 

the discovery of their most suitable remedies, were in- 
tent alone upon obscuring their rival reputations, and 
founding their own fortunes on each other's ruin. No 
sooner had one person succeeded in acquiring a great 
name, than another arose to combat and deride the 
method followed by the first. Within the compass of 
one century, no less than three different systems of 
medicine were seen introduced to Rome, and tins in- 
constancy prevailed even to the times which we now 
speak of.* 

The esteem and veneration in which the juriscon- 
sults were held during the times of the Republic, has 
been noticed in a preceding Section. Their replies 
were considered oracular in authority, and on their 
opinions depended, in gi*eat part, decisions both of 
a public and private nature. Though the introduc- 
tion of the monarchic form of government had les- 
sened considerably their authority, there still re- 



* Pliny, the elder,* in speaking of the physicians, says, M they. 
eager to acquire fame by the novelty of their systems, make a traffic 
of our lives; whence those disputes of physicians around the couches 
of the sick, where all are of a different opinion: whence that in- 
scription placed upon a certain sepulchre, in which the deceased 
complains of having been destroyed by the crowd of his physicians 
— Barbacovi. 

* Lib. xxix. c. 1. 



JURISPRUDENCE. 1 '2U 

matfied, even at this time, many jurists of celebrity, 
whose names are given by Pomponius.* Superior 
to all the rest, appear two of the most illustrious in 
the number, viz. : Atteius Capito and Antistius 
Labeo, who both florished in the age of Augustus. 
These were the founders of two opposing sects, as 
Capito inculcated that the laws ought to be under- 
stood and acted upon according to their literal sense, 
while Labeo, on the contrary, maintained that their 
spirit and design should also be considered, in order 
that protection might thus be afforded, when neces- 
sary, against their literal rigor. Capito was raised, 
by Augustus, to the consulship, in the view of his 
thereby surpassing his rival, to whom the emperor 
was not equally favorable. Tacitus*f" calls them two 
great ornaments of the Republic. Capito had for a 
successor Masurius Sabinus ; Labeo, again, had 
Nerva Cocceius for his. Lucius Cassius Longinus 
next succeeded Sabinus in his sect ; the same person 
who held the consulship in the reign of Tiberius. 
He is frequently noticed, with eulogy, by Tacitus, 
who asserts, that he surpassed all in a scientific ac- 
quaintance with the laws. His fame rose, in fact, 
so high, that the sect he followed received also, sub- 
sequently, a name, the Cassian, derived from his ; 



* Dig. lib. i. tit. *2. de Orig. Jur. -f- Annal. lib. iii. c. 75. 



130 LITERARY HISTORY. 

but while he thus sustained the honor of the party 
founded by Capito, the rival sect of Labeo also pro- 
duced its illustrious adherents. To Cocceius Nerva, 
who succeeded its founder, Proculus followed, and 
thence the sect became subsequently denominated 
the Proculean ; of this jurist, indeed, the only no- 
tice we possess is, that he had written some books 
of letters, noticed in the Digests. Pomponius has 
scarcely left anything save the names of the succes- 
sors to Proculus andCassius, in their respective sects ; 
but among all the jurists who lived in the period 
now spoken of, the most eminent appears to have 
been Salvius Julianus. The celebrated Heneccius, 
in his work entitled Historia Juris Romania has 
collected, with the greatest industry and erudition, 
all the notices extant relative to him. Though it 
has been a subject of lengthened dispute, among the 
learned, whether or not he were Milanese by birth, 
it is at least indisputable that he was one of the 
most illustrious jurists of Rome, and that the fame 
he enjoyed procured him appointment to the first 
dignities of the state, being twice promoted to the 
consulship alone. What, however, gave a lasting 
reputation to the name of Salvianus, was the Per- 
petual Edict compiled by him : the appearance of 
which forms a memorable epoch in the history of 
Roman jurisprudence or legislation. The autho- 
rity possessed by the pretors to publish new laws in 



JURISPRUDEN( i 131 

their edicts when entering upon office, had produced 
considerable confusion in the administration of jus- 
tice, from the frequency of the additions thus occa- 
sioned to the pre-existing laws ; and, as in the mul- 
titude of those formed by the existence of such a 
system, there were many that stood in direct oppo- 
sition to each other, an uncertainty and variety were 
necessarily caused in legal decisions. The emperor 
Adrian, having wisely resolved upon the formation 
of a fixed and regular code of jurisprudence, devolved 
the task on Julianus, in the view that he should 
collect, examine, and confront the mass of edicts 
framed by all preceding pretors, and, by the rejec- 
tion of whatever appeared superfluous or contrary to 
reason and justice, and the addition of all that he 
might consider expedient, a well regulated and ar- 
ranged body of laws might be formed to guide in 
future decisions, and serve as a standard to which 
all judges and magistrates might refer. The code 
thus formed by Julianus, received the title of Per- 
petual Edicts and has served as a model and guide 
to succeeding ages.* 

It was at this period, also, that two measures 
were introduced to the advantage of the sciences. 



* Should more ample information, on the jurisconsults of this 
age, be desired, the works of the French author, Teirason, and the 
Historia Juris Roinani of Heneccius, may be consulted Barbacovi. 



lo2 LITERARY HISTORY. 

The masters of schools had previously received pay 
solely from their scholars, but Vespasian now as- 
signed a fixed salary from the public treasury, 
equally to the Greek as to the Latin grammarians, 
and the sum thus annually paid amounted, as Sue- 
tonius* asserts, to one hundred thousand sesterces. + 
The merit of the other improvement was due to 
the emperor Adrian. 

The grammarians and rhetoricians had hitherto 
held their schools in private houses, till that prince 
first planned the erection of a public edifice to form 
a proper seat for the sciences, and gave to this build- 
ing, on its completion, the name of Atheneum. It 
was not, however, occupied exclusively by the 
schools, as orators and poets also resorted there for 
the public recitation of their verses. Many profes- 
sors of Rhetoric and Grammar also florished at this 
period, but, with the solitary exception of the works 
of Asconius Pedianus, a part of whose commenta- 
ries on the Orations of Cicero, yet remain : their 
productions are now entirely lost. Asconius was a 
Paduan by birth, as he informs us himself in his 
writings, when speaking of Livy as a fellow coun- 



* In Vesp. c. 18. 

X As one sestertius has been computed equivalent to twopence 
sterling, the sum stated may be calculated as equa.1 to £8333 ster- 
ling Translator. 



LIBRARIES. 



133 



tryman. The great abundance of rhetoricians in 
Rome might naturally be imagined as sufficient to 
cause the eloquence of the golden period to re-ap- 
pear, but this effect did not ensue, while these 
persons, in fact, contributed largely themselves to 
the continually increasing decay of their art. Men 
whose talents there extended only to fluency of ex- 
pression were unable to afford their audience that 
instruction which it becomes the true orator to sup- 
ply. Antithesis, affectation of style, subtilties, and 
sententious sayings, were the principal ornaments 
affected by the rhetoricians of that time in their 
orations. 

The public libraries first opened in Rome by 
Asinius Pollio, and afterwards added to by Augus- 
tus, have been spoken of in a preceding section ; but 
the reign of Nero proved fatal even to these. In 
the frightful conflagration by Suetonius,* Dio*|- and 
other writers referred expressly to the instigation 
of that tyrant, but the origin of which the words of 
Tacitus^ permit to remain dubious, even the libraries, 
in great part, also, fell a prey to the flames. It is 
easy to conceive the damage thus occasioned to every 
species of literature and science, as in those times, 
wherein the copies of works were so rare, many 



* In Ner. c. 38. + Lib. 62. J Lib. 1.5. 



134 LITERARY HISTORY. 

must have entirely perished. A similar calamity 
occurred some years subsequent, in the reign of 
Titus, when the flames continued for three suc- 
cessive days, and the devastation thus caused to 
Rome proved literally frightful. Among the edi- 
fices that the flames then destroyed, Dio mentions* 
the " Portico of Octavia, together with the books ;" 
those which had formed the library, placed there by 
Augustus, and that had escaped the effects of the 
previous conflagration. To Domitian must be as- 
cribed the merit of having repaired the loss occa- 
sioned by these two calamities just noticed, for he 
undertook, as Suetonius*)* relates, to renew the 
libraries destroyed, and not only collected, at a 
great expense, and from every part, as many books 
as could be recovered, but dispatched learned* men 
even to the distance of Alexandria, where literature 
then florished, that they might take copies of the 
works to be met with there. Trajan also signalized 
his munificence in this mode by opening a new 
library, which, from his name, was termed the 
Ulpian. But the luxury displayed by private citi- 
zens in adding libraries to their own houses vied 
with the liberality of the emperors in founding them 
for public purposes, until there scarcely was to be 



Lib. 66. f In Domit. c. 20. 



FIXE ARTS. 135 

met with a wealthy person who possessed not tut 
own. Seneca* frequently takes occasion to deride 
this fashion. " To what purpose," says he, " are 
those innumerable books and libraries, the very 
indices to which their owners scarcely ever look 
at ? This literary luxury fosters not study, but 
ostentation only, while all those books, along with 
the portraits of their authors, are sought for only to 
serve as ornaments to the walls." 

Tiberius extended but a very partial patronage to 
the fine arts, while his successor, Caligula, made a 
frightful spoliation on many of their finest monu- 
ments that decorated Rome, by his commanding 
the demolition of all the statues that Augustus had 
caused to be erected in the Field of Mars to the 
great men of the country, and by transporting from 
Greece, besides, as many statues of the divinities, 
the works, too, of the most celebrated artists, as 
could be procured, and that only for the purpose 
of destroying their busts, in order to substitute his 
own. Caligula was not, however, actually mimical 
to the fine arts, since he caused many valuable 
statues to be transported from Egypt to Rome ; and 
Pliny mentions the colossus of Jupiter, erected by 
that emperor in the Field of Mars, while the mag- 



* De tranquill. animi, c. 19. 



136 LITERARY HISTORY. 

nificent works undertaken and successfully com- 
pleted by him, also necessarily contributed to main- 
tain the prosperity of the fine arts ; such were the 
draining of the Fucine Lake, the erection of aque- 
ducts, canals, and other works of regal magnificence, 
which could not be executed without the assistance 
of talented architects. Rome was indebted to Nero 
also for many precious statues, conveyed from G reece 
to adorn his famous golden palace.* Nor did he 
study to adorn it with foreign works of art alone, 
but endeavored also to raise to himself a monument 
sufficient to immortalise his name, since calling from 
Gaul, Zenodorus, a celebrated sculptor of that time, 
he commanded him to raise a colossal figure, having 
a height of a hundred and twenty feet, and placed 
it in front of his golden palace. Nero also delighted 
in paintings. Himself he caused to be drawn in the 
gigantic proportions of a hundred and twenty feet, 
and, of course, equal in dimensions to the collossus 
just described. But as it proved impossible to find 
a picture board equal to such enormous proportions, 
a frame of cloth was substituted, an innovation, as 



* Five hundred statues of bronze from the temple of Apollo at 
Delphi alone were transferred to Rome, and among these stood, 
it is supposed, the two celebrated statues still existing in Rome, 

the Apollino Belvedere and the Gladiator of the Villa Borghese 

Barbacovi. 



FIXE ARTS. 137 

Pliny* asserts, then for the first time introduced. 
But the caprice of Xero here gave birth to an in- 
vention in the art, and assisted towards a greater 
perfection in its modes. Vespasian and Titus both 
extended their favor and protection to the arts 
equally as to letters ; but Adrian and Trajan , above 
all, in that surpassed all preceding emperors. The 
magnificent erections of arches, columns, aqueducts, 
temples, bridges, and similar works, together with 
the honors and premiums granted to the more dis- 
ting-uished artists, ought necessarily to have influenced 
in awakening an ardor in the public mind for the 
study of the fine arts, but notwithstanding this, in 
the times which followed, they progressed only in a 
miserable decline. The causes which have been 
already adduced as effecting the decay of letters, 
produced, in the period which succeeded, also similar 
effects on the fine arts. Their love of novelty seduc- 
ing the artists to prefer a rivalry with the works of 
the ancient masters to an imitation of their ex- 
amples, caused the introduction of new modes in 
art, and hence the ambition to attain a higher excel- 
lence there produced only an increased degree of 
inferiority. 



Lib. 34. c. 8. 



138 



SECTION VII. 

THE LITERATURE OF ITALY FROM THE EPOCH OF ADRIAN TO 
THAT OF CONSTANTINE. 

Titus Antoninus, surnamed the Pius, who, in 
a.d. 138, succeeded Adrian on the throne, was 
one of the most wise and virtuous princes that 
ever assumed the purple. With the exception of 
one virtue, to which he did not, indeed, always 
strictly adhere, there remained not one of which he 
did not afford the most luminous example. In the 
conviction that he reigned only for the benefit of 
his people, all his cares were devoted to the sole 
object of constantly enforcing the universal obser- 
vance of order, justice, and the laws, together with 
the promotion, through every means, of the public 
prosperity and felicity. But while attending to 
these, the objects of his highest solicitude, he ne- 
glected not the interests of literature or the sciences. 
Vespasian, as has been noticed in the preceding 
section, had already assigned an annual salary to 



GENERAL HISTORY. 139 

the teachers of rhetoric in Rome. Antoninus not 
only confirmed this grant, but extended the benefit 
of Ins liberality and protection not to these alone, 
but equally to all the other professors in Rome, as well 
as in the provinces of the empire. He then granted 
them, at the same time, many privileges, including an 
exemption from various public burdens. Julius 
Capitolinus,* the writer of his life, attests that he 
was a man of excellent talent, of refined literary 
tatse, and distinguished eloquence. 

The reign of Marcus Aurelius, surnamed the 
Philosopher, who, adopted by Antoninus, through 
the w T ish of Adrian, succeeded him on the throne in 
161, proved not less favorable to literature. This 
worthy successor to Antoninus in many respects even 
surpassed his predecessor, as all the virtues of a pri- 
vate citizen were united in his character to all those 
winch distinguish a great prince. Modest in gran- 
deur, moderate in enjoyment, virtuous in the midst 
of pleasures, and austere in the midst of luxuries, 
he was equally eminent for his qualties as a soldier 
as for his virtues as a sovereign and as a man. He 
was, at the same time, an indefatigable student and 
liberal promoter of literary study. The celebrated 
saying of Plato, that states would florish, when 



* In Antonin. c. 2. 



140 LITERARY HISTORY. 

philosophers governed or when governors philoso- 
phised, was one which it delighted him to quote. The 
most talented men of the time had been selected to 
the instruction of his earlier years ; and in his pages 
they are honorably noticed by himself. He appears, 
indeed, ever to have entertained a grateful recollec- 
tion of his teachers, and peculiarly of Fronto, to whom 
he raised a statue in the senate house, besides hold- 
ing the portraits of all the rest, cast in gold, among 
those of his household gods. But though his atten- 
tion had been thus directed to all the sciences, he 
soon abandoned poetry, eloquence, and the other 
branches of the Belles Lettres, with the view of oc- 
cupying himself exclusively in the study of philo- 
sophy ; and among the benefits for the enjoyment 
of which we find him returning thanks to Heaven, 
is included that of having been early diverted from 
such studies, that probably appeared to his mind 
too trival in their nature. Having abandoned him- 
self, then, solely to the study of Stoical philosophy, 
he has left to posterity an illustrious monument of 
his labors, in the twelve books, written in Greek, 
and containing an exposition or elucidation of those 
maxims and reflections which had formed the sub- 
jects of his meditations. He has been accused by some 
as deficient in arrangement and connexion ; but 
those properties of a writer ought not to be looked 
for where he does not himself affect to emplov them. 



(,K\KK.\L HISTORY. 141 

Amelias, in this work, the example of which has 
been subsequently followed by other celebrated 
writers, has only studied to present to us a collec- 
tion of his thoughts as they occurred to his mind, 
without pretending to found upon them either trea- 
tises or dissertations. 

The honors and rewards with which Antoninus 
and Marcus Aurelius recompensed the learned, 
might naturally have been looked to as the means 
of a revival in Italy and Rome of the previous fer- 
vor for the cultivation of the sciences ; but the event 
corresponded not to those expectations. For as 
manners became every day more vitiated, and the 
ardor for study, existant in former times, had gradu- 
ally cooled, the efforts of those two emperors for 
the encouragement of the sciences was very far from 
producing, during their lifetime, the effects that might 
have been anticipated. Had the succeeding empe- 
rors followed in the footsteps of their two illustrious 
predecessors, Italy and Rome might have regained 
their ground, and in the civil equally with the lite- 
rary state, resumed their previous brilliant position ; 
but, unfortunately, the personal characters of the 
succeeding emperors were widely different, and 
Marcus Aurelius, in particular, had the misfortune 
of being succeeded by a son of a character totally at 
variance with his own. This was Commodus, who, 
in 180, succeeding his father Aurelius on the throne. 



142 LITERARY HISTORY. 

renewed the atrocities of Nero, Tiberius, and the 
other tyrants. Aurelius had placed him under the 
care of some of the most learned men that Rome 
could then produce, but he devoted his time alone 
to the free gratification of his infamous passions, till 
Marsias, his concubine, of whom he had wished to 
rid himself, anticipating him in crime, caused his 
death through strangulation, by the hands of an 
athlete, in the 31st year of his age. Elvius Perti- 
nax was his successor in the empire, and from him 
the sciences and letters could hope for favor and 
protection, but he perished through the revolt of the 
Pretorian Bands after a reign of three months alone. 
The reign of Didius Julianus, a Milanese by birth. 
and great grandchild to the celebrated jurist, Salvius 
Julianus, who has been already spoken of, exceeded 
that of his predecessor by a few days only. To 
Julianus succeeded Septimus Severus, who possessed 
an extensive knowledge both of Greek and Latin 
literature, though he directed his attention, with 
more than ordinary fervor, to all the branches of 
study, and his reign might have proved of gTeat ad- 
vantage to the sciences, had not the long wars in 
which he found himself involved, against the Medes, 
Arabians, and other barbarous nations, besides those 
with his two competitors, Albinus and Pescennius 
Niger, each of whom had usurped a portion of the 
empire, intervened. 



GENERAL HISTORY. 1 4o 

After the death of Septimus Severus in 211, Bttft- 

sanius Caracalla, his son, was raised to the throne, 
but his reign presented only an uninterrupted se- 
ries of atrocious barbarities exercised even upon 
the most celebrated persons of the age ; besides the 
crime of fratricide, committed on his brother Geta. 
Maximus, the destroyer and successor of Cara- 
calla, was in turn put to death in 217, after only 
one year of reign, leaving the throne to Antonius 
Heliogabalus, the nephew of Septimus Severus, and 
as dissolute a prince as ever occupied the throne of 
the Caesars, who displayed, too, a cruelty equal to 
that of any of the most barbarous in the number of 
his predecessors. He was left, however, without 
much time to indulge his execrable propensities, 
being slain in 222, after scarce four years of reign, 
at the early age of eighteen. 

It was now time that a prince should ascend the 
throne, who might cause the cruelties of his prede- 
cessors to be forgotten, and direct his care equally 
to the general prosperity and felicity, as to that of 
literature and the sciences. Such was the young 
Alexander Severus. He was son of the celebrated 
Julia, sister to the mother of Heliogabalus. The 
education she bestowed on Alexander, was the wisest 
that a mother could possibly give a son destined to 
ascend the throne. Commencing his reign in the 
13th year of his age, under the direction of Julia, 



144 LITERARY HISTORY. 

and Thesa his grandmother, assisted by three coun- 
sellors of eminent prudence, his government was 
such that he appeared as sent from heaven to recom- 
pense the empire for its past calamities. The vir- 
tues of Titus, Trajan, Antoninus, and Marcus Aure- 
lius, seemed all renewed in Alexander, while the 
sciences and letters found in him not only an assi- 
duous student, but a magnanimous protector. His 
preceptors were the most learned men that Rome 
possessed at the time, and from these he acquired 
the knowledge of Greek and Latin literature. It 
was his habit to devote some hours of each day in 
time of war, as well as of peace, to the study of the 
Greek authors in particular ; but so high was his 
admiration of Cicero, and equally of Virgil, that he 
had their portraits suspended among those of the 
most celebrated heroes. In exercising his own taste 
for poetry, he composed versified memoirs of some 
of the best emperors. But not only were letters, 
but also the sciences and arts, the objects of his 
study, and not content with his own progress iu the 
latter, he was solicitous to excite a passion and 
esteem for them in the minds of others. Finally 
opening his treasury for the advancement of the sci- 
ences, he founded, in a style of regal magnificence, 
new schools of rhetoric, grammar, medicine, mecha- 
nics, and architecture, assigning also salaries to the 
professors of all these arts. 



GENERAL HISTORY. 145 

This wise and admirable prince was, however, 
barbarously cut off in the flower of his age, when 
only in his 26th year, a.d. 235, being slain in the 
camp, near Magonza, by his troops, impatient of 
the military discipline to which he had wished to 
subject them. Maximinus, the principal author of 
this execrable deed, was tumultuously placed upon 
the throne by his troops. It is unnecessary, how- 
ever, to speak further of that prince, nor of any of 
his successors, as their reigns produced nothing ad- 
vantageous to literature, with the exception of 
the emperor Gallienus a alone. His character, when 
viewed in a literary point of view, only, entitles him 
to be placed among the most eminent of the empe- 
rors, as many of his compositions were held in high 
and universal estimation ; but the virtues looked for 
in an orator or poet are not those demanded of a 
sovereign. Indolent and despicable, Gallienus ap- 
peared to prize his position only as a mean to the 
enjoyment of an ignominous repose. His reign 
exhibited a succession of convulsions in almost every 
province of the empire, whilst some yielded to the 
sack and pillage of the barbarians who now pressed 
in on every side, and some to those Roman generals 
who caused themselves be proclaimed sovereigns by 



a Ascended the throne, a.d. 260. 



146 LITERARY HISTORY. 

their troops. This was that unhappy era denomi- 
nated in history the " Period of the Thirty Tyrants,"" 
as such nearly was the number of those who, in the 
various parts and provinces of the empire, now 
usurped the sceptre ; and it is easy to conceive 
the injury necessarily occasioned to the arts and 
sciences by the existence of such a deplorable stat e 
of affairs. 

Claudius II. who succeeded Gallienus, in a.d. 
268, was one of the ablest princes that ever occu- 
pied the throne, but died after only two years of 
reign. That of Aurelian was, however, happier; 
he overcame all the usurpers who had started up, 
and triumphed equally over the various barbarians 
that had invaded the empire, besides obtaining a 
victory of peculiar celebrity over the famous queen 
Zenobia, who accompanied the triumphal car of her 
conqueror to Rome. His successor, Claudius Taci- 
tus, was well versed in literature, and particularly 
noted as an admirer and student of the works of 
Cornelius Tacitus, from whom, indeed, he claimed 
descent. So strong, in fact, was his admiration of 
that writer, that he imposed a legal obligation on all 
libraries not only to possess copies of his works, but 
commanded that an addition often other such should 
annually be made. From the sagacity and prudence 
of his character the reign of Claudius would have 
proved highly advantageous to literature, had it not 



GENERAL HISTORY. 147 

been cut off after a brief existence of six months. 
Probus, who followed him on the throne, succeeded 
equally in repressing the barbarians who invaded the 
empire as the ambitious who usurped the crown. 
Equal to him in virtue and courage was the emperor 
Marcus Aurelius Cams, assigned to him as successor, 
but his reign was of short duration, as also were 
those of his sons Carinus and Numerianus, both 
slain by the hands of their soldiers. After their 
deaths Diocletian was saluted emperor by his troops, 
and remained sole and undisturbed possessor of the 
throne. 

Diocletian, a sprung from a family of mean condi- 
tion in Dalmatia, inherited, nevertheless, virtues and 
talents very superior to his station, and particularly 
those which belong to prudence and military excel- 
lence. In the second year of his reign he selected 
to himself, as colleague and associate in the govern- 
ment, Maximianus, surnamed Hercules, a person 
certainly of courage and reputation in the military 
art, but cruel by disposition as well as rough and 
unpolished in manner. In a.d. 292, on account 
of the tumults by which the empire became con- 
vulsed, the two emperors united in the choice of 
two other colleagues, on whom the title of Ccssars 



a Ascended the throne, a.d. 283. 



148 LITERARY HISTORY. 

was conferred. Diocletian adopted, for this purpose, 
Maximianus Galerius, son to a peasant in Dacia, 
but valuable for his military talents. Maximianus, 
on his part, made choice of Constantius Clorus ; and 
a division of the empire into four parts was then 
effected, a proceeding which had never previously 
been adopted, and that subsequently became the 
source of fatal and disastrous consequences to the em- 
pire itself. It is unnecessary to speak of the wars that 
afterwards arose between those various emperors, 
nor of the revolutions thence occasioned, nor of the 
contests which ensued at a later period betwixt Con- 
stantine, after the death of Constantius Clorus, his 
father, who had reigned in Gaul, and Maxentius, 
son to Maximianus Hercules, and next betwixt Con- 
stantine and Licinius, who reigned in the east. The 
latter defeated by his rival, in 323, a. d. lost at 
the same time the empire and his life, leaving Con- 
stantine sole sovereign master of the whole Roman 
empire. 

From this succession of rulers, almost all involved 
in continual foreign or civil wars, there was none 
from whom literature could hope to receive either 
encouragement or protection. Men, for the greater 
part of mean and obscure birth, or trained from 
infancy to arms, they were scarcely acquainted even 
with its name. Such w r as the state of the Roman 
empire from the year a.d. 138, in which Adrian 



POETRY. 149 

died, till the commencement of the fourth century. 
The short account of it now given may be sufficient 
to acquaint us with the disastrous consequences it 
necessarily occasioned to the mental character of 
the age, and a separate notice of each department of 
literature and art will serve to confirm the opinion 
just advanced. 

Even this period, however, produced its list of poets, 
but both in number and value very inferior to those 
of the preceding times, while the poetry of three 
of them alone has descended to our age. The first 
of these, if indeed the name of poet can be applied to 
him, is a Serenus Sammonicus, from whom we have 
a didactic poem, or what may more properly be 
termed a number of verses relative to the medical 
art ; they are, however, utterly deficient in poetic 
vigor. The other two cotemporary poets were M. 
A. O. Nemesianus and T. Calpurnius. a The 
former, according to Vopiscus,* wrote three books 
upon fishing, hunting, and nautical art ; but of these 
the second alone has been preserved, and when 
viewed with a regard to the character of the time 
in which it was produced, may be considered as 
somewhat elegant and polished. Calpurnius, a 
Sicilian by birth, was cotemporary with the former, 

* In Caro ec. c. 1 2, 
a Both florished about a.d. 280. 



150 LITERARY HISTORY. 

to whom he dedicated his eclogues. These are 
characterised by a degree of elegance superior to that 
of the other writers of the age, but still remain very 
inferior to those of Virgil. 

The fortune of eloquence was equally unhappy, 
as, in fact, neither oration nor a single other com- 
position whatsoever relative to that art, has descend- 
ed to us from any Italian author of that time. Per- 
haps the highest reputation there was reached by 
Fronto Cornelius, of whom Aulus Gellius* speaks 
in the highest terms. Dio Cassius,*f" also, considers 
him as a high authority, and asserts that he was held 
in great esteem, standing in the very foremost rank 
as a pleader. He was named Preceptor, as has been 
already noticed, to the emperor Aurelian, who re- 
peatedly takes occasion to eulogise the wise instruc- 
tions of his master, and after having promoted him 
to the consulship, he demanded of the Senate the 
erection of a statue to his memory. The very strong 
encomiums bestowed on Fronto by the ancient wri- 
ters had excited a desire to possess some part of his 
compositions, from which to estimate the qualities 
of their merits and style. But the lost writings of 
that author — latterly discovered in a palimpsest 
MS. in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, and pub- 



Lib, xix. c. 8. + Lib. lxix. 



HISTORY. 



151 



lished bp the Abbe Mai — are certainly very far from 
meriting the praises lavished on them in the times 
which are spoken of. 

History had a larger number of students, but it 
also shared in the vicissitudes experienced by the 
other branches of literature, with regard to the 
merits of its style. Something may be said of those 
historians whose works are yet extant. Justinus, 
whose date appears to have belonged to the times 
of Antoninus Pius, reduced into the form of a Latin 
compendium the Annals, composed in Greek, by 
Trogus Pompeius ; a history which embraced a 
period commencing with the epoch of Ninus ; com- 
prised the events of the Macedonian empire, and 
closed with the age of Augustus. Considering the 
period of its production, the style of Justinus is ele- 
gant and neat. The only other author of that age 
whose works remain, and one who in part belongs 
to the class of historians, is Censorinus, whose small 
work, De Die Natali, assists to elucidate many 
points of Chronology and History. His style is 
characteristic of the age in which he wrote, very 
remote from the ancient eloquence, and interspersed 
with new-coined and unwonted words. 

The last historians of this age, and all nearly co- 
temporary in their dates, were the writers of the 
Historia Augusta, By this name w r as designated 
a biographic notice of the series of emperors, com- 



1-52 LITERARY HISTORY. 

mencing with Adrian and ending in Carinus and 
Nunierianus ; the composition of various author - 
but all equally characterised by an inelegant and 
unornamented style, unqualified by an a - 
grace, and, in fact, with the exception of some his- 
torical notices, frequently confused and injudicious 
in arrangement, as well as sometimes of questionable 
exactness, without anything to render them of value. 
With regard to the authors themselves, little more 
is known save the names and the age in which they 
lived. They were Elius Spartianus. Julius Capito- 
liuus. Elius Lampridius. Vulcatius Gallieanus. Tre- 
bellius Pollio. and Flavius Yopiscus : the latter, a 
Svracusan bv birth, and the least inelegant of the 
whole. Of the many other historians of that age, 

are remain no ve>tiges of their works, and an 
enumeration of them would only form a long and 
fatiguing catalogue of names. 

The number of Greek authors, who undertook to 
record the history of the Romans in that languag-e, 
was much larger : among these were Appian of 
Alexandria, Arrian of Nicomedia, and Dio Cassias, 
while it must be avowed, that in this study also the 
Greeks settled in Rome excelled the Latins. The 
Romans of that day, enfeebled by luxury and rich* - 
and occupied alone in trifles and amusements, shun- 
ned all species of study, and even those to whom it 
was an occupation, in using a language that, through 



PHILOSOPHY. 153 

the concourse of so many strangers to Rome, be- 
came every day more corrupt, introduced into their 

vie that same rudeness which characterised fami- 
liar conversation. 

Had regal patronage been sufficient to cause the 
sciences to reflorish, philosophy ought peculiarly, at 
this epoch, to have reassumed its former rank among 
the Romans, as Antoninus, Marc Aurelius, and 
others of the emperors, extended not only their 
esteem but substantial patronage to the philosophers. 
In spite of this, however, not one name, belonging 
either to Italy or Rome, occurs during the whole 
course of the period of which we speak, that has 
left any monument of its studies in philosophy. The 
Romans, as has been already asserted, enervated by 
luxury and riches, made philosophic studies the last 
objects of their attention. An exception, indeed, 
occurs in the names of two writers on Agriculture, 
who probably florished about this period, viz. : Si- 
culus Flaccus and A genus Urbicus. From the first 
we have part of his work, De Conditionibas Agro- 
rum, and from the second part of his commentaries 
on the book, De Limitibus Agrorunu attributed to 
Frontinus ; as well as a treatise, De Coyitroversiis 
Agrorum, which are inserted in the collections of 
the ancient writers on Agriculture. 

The medical sciences participated in the neglect 
from which philosophy now suffered, though the 



154 LITERARY HISTORY. 

arrival of Galen at Rome and his long residence there, 
appeared favorable to a revival in the study of those 
important arts. That writer, born at Pergamus in 
Asia, in the year a. d. 131 of the Christian era, acquired 
universal celebrity by the reputation of his works. 
In speaking of other medical men, Galen employs 
those terms of contempt natural to one who exposes 
the ignorance of others ; and his books abound in 
maxims, precepts, and observations of the highest 
utility, as the encomiums they have received from 
the most celebrated physicians in succeeding times 
attest : but they effected not a revival of the medi- 
cal art in Italy or Rome, nor did either produce a 
single name of eminence in that science. 

Jurisprudence was perhaps the only science of 
that period which boasted of a numerous and talent- 
ed body of students, whose exertions caused it to 
florish, and maintained for it that distinction which 
it had obtained in the preceding ages. This result 
is the less astonishing, as those who became eminent 
for their knowledge in that science, were honored 
by the emperors with the highest dignities and 
offices. Papinianus, a one of the most celebrated 
men of his age, rendered himself illustrious above all 
the other jurisconsults, not less by his incorruptible 



a Florish ed in the commencement of the third century. 



JURISPKl'DEXCE. 155 

probity than by the profundity of his genius and 
learning. The emperor, Septimus Severus, when 
dying, particularly recommended him to his sons — 
Caracalla and Geta ; but the prudent counsels, by 
which he endeavoured to unite them in the ties of 
a reciprocal friendship, proved unsuccessful, while 
the very excellence of his character became a motive 
to irritate against him the merciless Caracalla, whose 
first step was, to deprive him of his rank as Preto- 
rian Prefect, and next, either to command, or at 
least undoubtedly permit, his barbarous assassina- 
tion by the Pretorian Guards. He had published 
several legal works, various fragments of which are 
cited in the Pandects or Digests. Domitius Ulpi- 
anus succeeded Papinianus in celebrity as a jurist. 
Alexander Severus, in recognising his merits, ap- 
pointed him one of his council, as well as raised him 
to the high rank of Pretorian Prefect, and to the 
counsels of Ulpianianus the prudent and sagacious 
system of government maintained by that prince, is 
chiefly to be attributed. By his inflexible severity, 
however, he excited the hatred of the Pretorian 
guards, and fell a victim to their fury, although fly- 
ing for protection to the presence of the Emperor. 
There are more fragments of his many writings pre- 
served in the Pandects or Digests than of any Qther 
writer, and these evince their author to have been a 
very learned jurisconsult, highly entitled to the very 



156 LITERARY HISTORY 

great respect he enjoyed, as well as to the favor of 
his sovereign. Contemporary with, and not less 
celebrated than the two preceding, was Julius Paulus. 
Like the latter of those, too, he was held in the 
highest estimation by Alex. Severus, and filled also 
the office of Pretorian Prefect. Various fragments 
have reached us of the many works he had com- 
piled.* 

In spite of the universal decay of letters, accom- 
panied by a vitiated and corrupt form of style, the 
writings of almost the whole body of the Roman 
jurists of that day alone preserved, amid the general 
corruption, the ancient purity and majesty of the 
language of Latium. Their decisions or replies, 
existent in the Pandects or Digests, form, be- 
sides an admirable monument of the depth of learn- 
ing that characterised the ancient masters of the 
world — a learning which has called forth the admi- 
ration of other nations and ages. Deduced, for the 
greater part from the purest sources of that natural 



* Similar other jurists belonging to this age are mentioned by 
Heneccius, in his History of tJie Roman Law ; and again at greater 
length by G. N. Funcio, in his work, De Vegeta Latince Lingua 
Senectute, where with a most laborious diligence he enumerates se- 
verally all the fragments that have reached us from the works of 
the jurists of that age, in the body of the Roman law. — Barba- 
covi. 



GRAMMAR. 157 

light or reason, which is the common property of 
mankind, they frequently unfold the very deep 
ideas of justice, and consecrate maxims of unchang- 
ing equity. 

The most celebrated of the grammarians who 
florished at this period, was Aulus Gellius, whose 
lifetime fell under the reigns of Antoninus and Marc 
Aurelius. It is a question whether this author 
were an Italian by birth or not, but it is at least 
certain that he long resided in Rome, and enjoyed 
there the friendship of the most learned men of his 
age. From the circumstance of a residence at 
Athens for some time, and the method he had there 
adopted of jotting down at night those observations 
met with either in reading or conversation with the 
learned, that appeared to him worthy of being noted, 
he has given the name of Xoctes Attiece to his 
work, but opinions are exceedingly contradictory as 
to their merits. They unquestionably contain many 
light and frivolous observations, presenting no im- 
portance to warrant their preservation ; but it is at 
the same time equally true, that very many remarks 
relative to history, chronology, and the customs of 
antiquity, might in vain be sought for, unless in the 
pages of Aulus Gellius. In his style, mingled with 
much that is characteristic of the golden age of 
literature, there are also found many words and ex- 
pressions, entirely of new coinage, while it displays 



158 LITERARY HISTORY. 

the commencement of that corruption which became 
every day more decided. 

The Noctes Atticae of A. Gellius present to us 
those who enjoyed in that day the highest reputa- 
tion for learning in Rome, frequently occupied in 
fatiguing* researches relative to grammatical ques- 
tions of very inferior importance, while a spirit of 
littleness, so to express it, is perceived very remote 
from the elevated and sublime tone of iders preser- 
ved by the ancient Romans. Gellius mentions some 
of the grammarians then resident in Rome, and the 
Augustan history furnishes the names of several 
others, but a barren catalogue of these would only 
annoy the reader. 

The arts and sciences appear ever to accompany 
each other, either in a simultaneous progression or 
decline. The sciences and letters of those times 
had fallen, as has been already shown, into a state 
of ruinous decay, and the fine arts now shared in a 
similar fate. Under the reigns of Antoninus and 
Marc Aurelius, though many fine buildings certainly 
arose in Rome, as well as in other parts of the em- 
pire, while some of the statues and architectural 
works of this date, that merit admiration, are still 
extant, yet those of the times that follow exhibit 
sufficiently the rapid decline of art. The causes of 
this decay have been already adduced, but to those 
another of even greater effect, and applicable more 



FIXE ARTS. 159 

strongly to the ages that succeeded, should be added. 
The external wars, tumults, and revolts, that now 
so frequently convulsed the empire, completed the 
effectual ruin of the fine arts equally with the sci- 
ences and letters — a result which happier and more 
tranquil times might possibly have averted. 

But the arts lay not even then altogether dor- 
mant. We find a statue of gold, ten feet in height, 
erected by the people of Rome, in honor of the Em- 
peror Claudius the Second, and one of silver, 15001bs. 
in weight, also raised to him in the Forum, besides 
three of a similar description, dedicated by the Em- 
peror Tacitus to his predecessor Aurelian. New 
palaces and buildings, constructed in a style of the 
utmost luxury, adorned Rome, but almost every 
work of art was pervaded more or less by a charac- 
ter of barbarism, which the condition of the times 
now diffused universally. 



LITERATURE OF THE PROVINCES OF ITALY. 

Though Rome, considered the capital of the 
world, necessarily became thence the resort of all 
who aspired to the possession of dignities and honors, 
through the cultivation of the arts and sciences, yet 
the provinces of Italy enjoyed their share of literary 
distinction. They had their proportion of learned 



160 LITERARY HISTORY. 

men, and maintained public libraries and schools. 
Cicero affords them an honorable approbation, in 
stating that they had turned with ardor to the study 
of Greek literature, and in Latium particularly, 
although this fervor had afterwards decreased.* He 
chiefly commends the people of Tarentum, of Reg- 
gio in Calabria, and of Naples. These places had 
in fact formed part of the country anciently known 
as Magna Grecia, the high progress of which in the 
graver, equally with the lighter branches of litera- 
ture, has been already noticed. In the latter of 
those places, quinquennial combats of poetry were 
publicly celebrated, while Sicily, also, had not lost 
its admiration of those studies by which it had for- 
merly rendered itself so celebrated ; it possessed 
several theatres, at the one at Palermo, and that of 
Syracuse, in noticing which Cicero bestows on it 
the title of, " the very great." Other cities of Italy 
had equally their theatres. Padua had one, and 
we read in Tacitus, that the celebrated Traseas 
Petus, a native of that city, disdained not to mount 
himself the boards there, and perform a part in tra- 
gedy. Pesaro, also, had its theatre, while generally 
throughout Tuscany and Lombardy, they were com- 



* Erat Italia tunc plena graecarum artium ac disciplinarum stu- 
diaque haec et in Latio vehementius colebantur, quam nunc iisdem 
in oppidis, Pro Archia, num. 3. 



PROVINCES OF ITALY. 161 

mon — proving the taste for, and cultivation of, thea- 
tric poetry by the people of those provinces. Tira- 
boschi proceeds to demonstrate that the other sci- 
ences and studies also florished generally throughout 
the districts of Italy ; and that, for example, the 
cities of Como, Milan, Novara, Bergamo, Cremona, 
and Turin, had their public schools. The preceding 
pages have, besides, shown how numerous were 
those among the illustrious authors that have been 
noticed, who belonged not by birth to Rome, but 
had been attracted thither from the other cities and 
provinces of Italy. 



162 



SECTION VIII. 

LITERATURE OF ITALY, FROM THE EPOCH OF CONSTANTINE, 
TILL THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST. 

It ought, perhaps, here to be remarked, that pre- 
vious even to the elevation of Constantine to the 
throne, the Christian religion had effected a mighty 
progress, while every day witnessed its increase ; 
nor did it want writers to stand forward in its de- 
fence against the attacks of Paganism. It is not 
intended, however, in this compendium, to notice 
Sacred Literature, nor the writers on ecclesiastical 
matters, though there are two distinguished Italian 
authors, who florished in the preceding age, that 
must not be passed over in silence, viz. : Minutius 
Felix and Lactantius Firmianus. The precise pe- 
riod in which the former lived cannot be stated with 
certainty, but that he at least preceded the latter is 
proved by the mention made of him by Lactantius,* 

* Div. Instit. lib. i.e. 11, &c. 



CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. 163 

and it may be thence inferred that he florished. at 
the latest, about the middle of the third centurv. 
Though by many believed to have been an African 
by birth, he long resided at Rome, occupied as a 
pleader of causes in the Forum. Having embraced 
the Christian religion, he produced in its favor a 
dialogue, entitled Octavius, where, if he failed in 
demonstrating, as should have been wished, the truth 
of the Christian faith, he was at least successful m 
combating and deriding the superstitious errors and 
absurdities of Paganism, whilst his style is much 
more refined than is usually found in the writers of 
the third century. 

Lactantius was. however, the writer who acquired, 
in that age, the highest reputation by his works, and 
his place is among those of the third century, as the 
greater part of his life fell within that period. Some 
ancient writers speculate on the country of his birth, 
but, by the most probable opinion he was a native 
of Rome. Called into Gaul to superintend the 
education of the young Crispus, eldest son to the 
emperor Constantine, he spent the remainder of his 
life, and died there, in extreme old age. about the 
year 325. In the list of his compositions, that en- 
titled, Of Divine Institutions, in which he success- 
fully combats the absurdities of Paganism, is parti- 
cularly celebrated ; and another of equal valur 
that on The Deaths of the Persecutors, while, in 



164 LiTERARY HISTORY. 

the Eusebeian Chronicle, he is styled the most learned 
man of his age. We find him also highly commended 
by St. Jerome,* who adds, however, a remark, that 
he was more powerful in demonstrating the falseness 
of Paganism, than in proving the truth of Christian- 
ity.^ But however this might be, Lactantius had 
the merit of adopting, in the midst of the corruption 
and decay into which the reigning taste of his age 
had fallen, a style at once so elegant and pure, as to 
acquire for him, in all ages, the glorious title of the 
Christian Cicero. We are now, however, arrived 
at the reign of Constantine. 

This Prince raised, in 306 a.d. to the throne, on 
the death of his father Constantius Clorus, who 
had reigned in Gaul, after having overcome all the 
aspirants to the empire of the west, and subse- 
quently, in 323, vanquished Licinius also, who had 
reigned in the east, remained undisputed master of 
all the vast provinces subject to the Roman sway, 
while, under his reign, a new and unexpected order 
of things is presented to our view. Having em- 
braced the recently arisen Christian religion, though 
previously forbidden and proscribed by preceding 



* De. Scrip. Eccles. c. 80. 

•f- Lactantius quasi quidem fluvius eloquentiae tulliannae, utinam 
tarn nostra affirmare potuisset, quam facile aliena destruxit. Ep. 
49, ad Paul. 



GENERAL HISTORY. 105 

emperors, it now became the religion of the throne, 
Constantine, either through the strength of those 
military talents by which he overcame all his foreign 
as well as internal enemies, or on account of having 
given peace to the church, and rendered the Chris- 
tian religion dominant, has obtained the title of " the 
Great f* but in looking to the letters and sciences of 
Italy, his merits are otherwise to be regarded. It 
is easy to conceive how fatal his choice of the city 
of Byzantium, which thence acquired the name of 
Constantinople, as the seat of empire proved, not 
only to all Italy as well as Rome, but to Italian 
literature in general. This latter city had hitherto 
stood the capital of the world, but from that epoch 
the tide necessarily flowed towards that point where 
the throne resided. Constantinople thence attracted 
all the most eminent persons within its walls, and 
scarcely left to Rome any thing save the magni- 
ficence of her fabrics, and the empty display of her 
majesty and splendor. It is not then astonishing 
that literature also passed from Rome to the rival 
capital, where it could alone hope for recompense 
and honors. 

After the death of Constantine, which took place 
in 337, the empire being divided between his three 
sons, Constantine, Constans, and Constantius, Italy 
fell into the share of the latter. But after three 
years of reign, war having ensued between him and 



166 LITERARY HISTORY. 

his brother Constantine, the latter proving victori- 
ous, found himself, on the death of his brother, 
master of all the west, till, in 350, Magnentius, who 
had risen in arms, deprived him of his life and crown. 
Magnentius, in his turn, defeated by the arms of 
Constantius, Emperor of the East, destroyed him- 
self in 353, leaving to his rival the possession both 
of the eastern and western empires. Constantius 
was succeeded in 361 by Julian, his brother-in-law 
and cousin, but his reign endured only two years, 
being slain in a battle against the Persians, when aged 
only 32. Educated in the Christian religion, from 
which he afterwards apostatised, Julian has received 
from the Christian world the opprobrious title of 
" the Apostate;" but in character, however, he was a 
person of lively genius, and an able student of let- 
ters, to the means of promoting which he had di- 
rected his attention, though his reign proved too 
brief to attain that end. The reign of Jovian, his 
successor, endured only about eight months, and 
therefore offers nothing connected with our argu- 
ment. Valentian being next placed upon the throne, 
assumed as a colleague his brother Valens, leaving 
to him the government of the east, while he re- 
tained for himself that of the west, and again, in 
367, selected Gratian, his son, at that period a 
child scarcely eight years of age, as associate in 
the empire. Valentian united to those distin- 



GENERAL HISTORY. 16*7 

guished virtues which rendered him one of the great- 
est of princes, refinement of taste and admiration 
for literature, while he failed not to promote to 
the utmost extent of his power the sciences and 
general studies, extending to them the means in- 
fluential in their revival. He confirmed to all the 
professors of Rome their privilege of exemption from 
public burdens, extending the benefit of that ex- 
emption even to their wives. They were, at the 
same time, freed from the obligation of receiving 
soldiers. It must be borne in mind, however, that 
laws, promulgated with a view to the encourage- 
ment of the sciences, are but powerless when man- 
ners have become long vitiated and corrupt. Am- 
mianus Marcellinus,* whom we shall have occasion 
shortly to notice, in describing the condition of 
Rome at that era, represents it to us as buried in 
the most infamous vices and wrapt in the pro- 
foundest ignorance. He asserts that a tone of cri- 
minality and indecency, long overlooked by the 
negligence of its governors, had taken so deep a root 
in that city, that the famous Cretan Epimenides 
even should not have proved powerful enough to 
purge it. He relates, besides, that those houses 
which had once been the theatres of study now 



* Lib. xxviii. c. 4. 



168 LITERARY HISTORY. 

resounded with the voices of effeminate instruments, 
that musicians had usurped the places of philo- 
sophers, buffoons those of orators, and that the 
libraries lay like sepulchres, perpetually closed. 
The life of Valentian closed in 375, his son Gra- 
tian, then in his sixteenth year, succeeding him in 
the empire of the West. The emperor Valens, who 
reigned in the east, having been defeated and slain 
by the Goths, in 378, Gratian hastened to the de- 
fence of the eastern empire, calling to his aid, at 
the same time, Theodosius, a commander illustrious 
no less by his general abilities than for his military 
talents, who obtained a complete victory over the 
previously victorious barbarians, and repulsed them 
beyond the Danube. In return for those import- 
ant services, Gratian conferred on Theodosius a 
share in the empire, assigning to him the govern- 
ment of the east. From his character as a prince 
of the most amiable disposition and singular virtues, 
the fondest hopes were conceived of Gratian ; and 
literature could now flatter itself that it had found 
in him a generous protector. Letters he had dili- 
gently studied under the direction of the celebrated 
Ausonius, to whom he signalised his gratitude by 
raising him, at a later period, to the honor of the 
consulship. The brilliant expectations conceived 
of Gratian, however, speedily vanished. In 383, 
on the revolt of Maximus, one of his generals, while 



GENERAL HISTORY. H;J* 

the young prince, abandoned by his troops, sought 
for safety in flight, being overtaken at Lyons, he was 
slain there, while yet only aged twenty-four. The 
young emperor, Valentinian II. having been forced 
by the usurper to fly from Italy, Theodosius ad- 
vanced with a force from the east to his succor, and 
having defeated and captured Maximus, deprived 
him of life, in 388. Valentinian II. remained but a 
short time upon the throne, being slain in 392, then 
only in his twentieth year, through the means of 
the rebel general Arbogastes. The latter, as well 
as Eugenius, whom he had placed upon the throne, 
soon perished, being defeated, in his turn, by Theo- 
dosius, in 394. This prince, remaining now sole 
possessor both of the eastern and western empires, 
proceeded to Milan, covered with glory, but un- 
happily died there in the following year, 395, in his 
50th year, leaving a character, for worth, piety, and 
all the most luminous virtues, worthy of comparison 
with those of the most illustrious sovereigns, and 
one that justly acquired for him the title of " the 
Great." 

The successors of Theodosius were his two sons, 
Arcadius and Honorius, the former in the eastern 
empire, and the latter in the western ; but neither 
of them inherited the virtues of their father. Ho- 
norius, in the west, a prince equally imbecile and 
weak, alike uncharacterised by virtues as by vices, 

H 



170 LITERARY HISTORY. 

left Stilico, his minister and commander of the 
forces, to reign under his name. The invasions of 
Italy, and other provinces of the empires, by the 
Goths, Vandals, Alani, Snevi, and other barbarous 
nations, now commenced. Stilico combated them 
with a success proportionate to his valor, defeating 
and repulsing the enemy several times, but becoming 
suspected of a wish to place the imperial diadem on the 
head of his son Eucherius, whether innocent or guilty, 
they were both beheaded by order of Honorius. 
Very soon after an immense army of Goths, con- 
ducted by Alaric, invading Italy, entered Rome in 
410, and effected there a horrible pillage of three 
day's duration. Alaric leaving Rome, died soon 
after in Calabria, but that event secured not peace 
to the empire, which now seemed to witness a re- 
newal of the times of Gallienus, when usurpers arose 
on every side to attack the throne, and barbarians 
sprung up from every quarter to devastate the pro- 
vinces. Honorius, after a most unhappy reign of 
twenty years duration, died at Ravenna in 423, 
aged thirty-nine. His nephew, Valentinian III., a 
child only six years of age, was raised to the purple 
in the west, under the guardianship of his mother 
Placidia. Italy enjoyed a long interval of tran- 
quillity under this prince's reign ; but in the year 
452, it witnessed the impetuous entry of the famous 
Attila, King of the Huns, who, carrying Aquileia. 



GENERAL HISTORY. 1/] 

overran great part of the country, fire and sword 
accompanying his progress, until, being met by an 
embassy from Rome, with the pontiff St. Leo at it- 
head, he was induced to retire into Pannonia. Va- 
lentinian survived this invasion only three yaacs, 
being cut off by a conspiracy in 455, at his thirty- 
eighth year ; indolent and vicious, he had witnessed 
the empire brought to the point of its ruin without 
emotion. Maximus, who had been, although se- 
cretly, the principal author of that prince's death. 
now assumed the imperial diadem. Eudocia, wi- 
dow of the latter prince, unsuspicious of the treason 
of Maximus to her husband, consented to a marriage 
with him ; but on discovery of his crime, in the 
violence of her anger she called on Genseric, king 
of the Vandals, to undertake her revenge, and he 
speedily crossed to Italy from Africa at the head of 
a powerful army. The Roman forces, discouraged, 
rose in revolt against Maximus, and assassinated 
him, after a reign of only three months' duration ; 
but Genseric, still advancing, made an impetuous 
entry into Rome. a The sack of that city continued 
for fourteen days, and the Vandals, after having 
made booty of as much of all that was most valuable 
as they could lay hands upon, laden with prey, and 



" In 455 a.d. 



172 LITERARY HISTORY. 

accompanied by a great body of prisoners, retired 
to Africa. Avitus, commander of the Roman troops 
in Gaul, was proclaimed emperor by his troops soon 
after the death of Maximus, and, acknowledged 
as such also by the emperor of the east, entered 
Rome ; but after a brief reign of little more than 
one single year, Ricimerus, returning victorious from 
an expedition against the Vandals, turned his arms 
against the emperor, whom he compelled to depose 
the purple in exchange for the bishopric of Piacenza. 
Ricimerus was now left, as it may be termed, arbi- 
ter of the imperial diadem in the west, though it 
remained unoccupied for several months after the 
death of Avitus. Majorianus, general of the forces, 
was now placed upon the throne, and all the writers 
of that time concur in eulogising highly the pru- 
dence, worth, and combination of all the virtues 
worthy of a monarch, which characterised that Prince ; 
but the ambitious Ricimerus, observing with jealousy 
the every-day increase of his authority and power, 
barbarously caused his assassination near Tortona, in 
461, and after little more than the third year of his 
reign had been completed. Ricimerus next con- 
ferred the sceptre upon one Severus, a person of no 
reputation whatsoever, who held it for about four 
years, and died in 465. The throne of the western 
empire now remained vacant for a period of two 
years, an interval which the barbarians found too 



GENERAL HISTORY. 17^ 

opportune to neglect for the further extension of 
their conquests. The Romans finally entreated 
Leo, Emperor of the East, to assent to the nomina- 
tion of Antemius, member of an illustrious family 
in Constantinople, and of high military character, 
to the government of the western empire. Leo, in 
consequence, placed the imperial diadem upon his 
head, and dispatched him to Italy in 467 ; but a 
fatal dissension having arisen between the new 
monarch and the flagitious Ricimerus, closed with 
the death of Antemius, slain by the former in 472. 
Meanwhile, Olibrius, dispatched by Leo, Emperor 
of the East, into Italy, to the assistance of Ante- 
mius, having reached it only subsequent to that 
Princess death, was placed in the vacant throne 
through the instrumentality of Ricimerus himself ; 
but both the new emperor and he finished their 
careers in the same year. Glicerius, whom the 
Romans had placed upon the throne, found a rival 
in Julius Nipotes, on whom Leo had conferred the 
imperial dignity. Glicerius, constrained to yield, 
received from his opponent an appointment to the 
bishopric of Salona in Dalmatia, in 474. But Julius 
was in turn obliged to fly from Rome in the fol- 
lowing year, before the arms of Orestes, general in 
Gaul, and, retiring himself to Salona, was after- 
wards slain there. Romulus, surnamed Augustulus, 
was proclaimed emperor by Orestes, and in this 



174 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



despicable Prince the series of the Roman emperors 
in the west was closed. Odoacer, whom the Goths 
had chosen for their chief, having entered Italy and 
besieged Orestes in Pavia, commanded his death on 
the capture and sack of that city. Advancing thence 
to Rome, he caused himself be proclaimed King 
of Italy there ; and proceeding thence to Ravenna, 
he despoiled Augustulus of the purple, and assign- 
ing a sufficient revenue for his support, confined him 
to a castle near Naples. Thus, Italy and all the 
western empire fell in 476, under the dominion of 
those Goths and other barbarians who had already 
occupied them in every part. 

Under the influence of such a succession of revo- 
lutions and convulsions, it is easy to decide whether 
or not literature and the sciences could possibly 
exist in a condition of prosperity. The internal or 
civil wars, rebellions of the generals, invasions of 
the barbarians, with all the horrors that accompanied 
them while they led the empire to the last stage of 
its destruction, brought letters equally to that state 
of final decay of which we shall now find the proofs 
sufficiently clear. Tiraboschi,* in noticing the works 
produced by some of the writers of that age, dwells 
particularly upon those of the African, Marius Vit- 



Stor. del. Let. Itel. torn iv. lib. 6. c. 3. 



ELOQUENCE. 1 7-> 

torinus, who taught eloquence at Rome, where a 
statoe Vras erected to him in the Trajan Forum, 
and of whom St. Augustine speaks in encomiastic 
terms. The high esteem in which Vittorinus wa- 
thus held might naturally induce a belief that his 
writings must have been characterised by elegance 
and taste, but all of them that have been preserved 
exhibit to the very contrary, a style equally rough, 
obscure, and unrefined, nor allow us to form any 
conception why his fame, even at that day, should 
have stood so high. 

None of the remaining authors, whom Italy pro- 
duced at that period, have left us any monument of 
their eloquence, with the exception of Q. Aurelius 
Simmacus, some specimens of whose style have 
been preserved. This author held several important 
charges in the state, having being proconsul of 
Africa, in 384 prefect of Rome, and ordinary con- 
sul . in 395 ; but these honors were not unaccom- 
panied by unfortunate vicissitudes. Zealous for the 
worship of his pretended deities, he had solicited, 
in the name of the Roman senate, the re-establish- 
ment of the altar to Victory, previously destroyed 
by command of the Emperor Gratian. Having 
incurred through this, and several other circum- 
stances, the displeasure of the Emperor Theodo- 
sius the Great, in his dread of being punished 
with death, he fled for refuge to a church, but 



170 LITERARY HISTORY. 

Theodosius afterwards granted him a pardon. No- 
thing can acquaint us more clearly with the depraved 
taste existing in that age, than reading, on the one 
hand, the eulogies heaped on Simmacus by cotem- 
porary authors, and perusing, on the other, that part 
of his works which has been preserved. Prudentius 
speaks of him as a person of prodigious eloquence, 
and superior to Cicero even.* Macrobius presents 
him for a model in one of the four classes of eloquence, 
the flowery, namely, and declares that there he is 
not inferior to any of the ancients ;"f* but, should we 
take up the ten books of letters by Simmacus, the 
only samples of his style that have been preserved, 
we cannot but feel astonished, at the least, how this 
writer could ever acquire those high panegyrics with 
which we find him honored. After studying his 
oration for the re- construction of the altar to Victory, 
inserted among his letters, and which there is reason 
to consider the most talented of his compositions, it 
is not to be conceived how any reasonable person 
could venture to compare it to any of those by Ci- 
cero. In some writers there lingered still the taste 
for that overwrought and conceited form of language 
introduced three centuries before, and joining to that 
a certain rudeness in thought and expression, ac- 



Lib. u In Svm. + Lib. v. Satur. c. 5. 



GRAMMAR. 177 

quired from intercourse with the barbarian nations 
that overran Italy at that period, a new mode in 
style was necessarily formed, which cannot be read, 
by those accustomed to the study of the cla- 
authors, without a feeling of disgust. 

Though Tiraboschi gives a distinct enumeration 
of the grammarians whom this age produced, they 
may be passed over in silence here, since an unne- 
cessary notice of them could only annoy the reader. 
The mention of the name of A. T. Macrobius,a who, 
though perhaps not an Italian by birth, lived and 
composed his works in Rome, is more honorable to 
Italy. From his pen we have two books of com- 
mentary on that part of the work of Cicero, De 
Republican which contains the Dream of Scipio ; 
but his seven books of Saturnalia, so termed from 
the fact of their having been composed on occasion 
of the festival sacred to Saturn, are more useful ; 
they form a learned and varied collection of notices 
that assist in elucidating some of the ancient writers. 
The style of the work is not, however, the most 
elegant, while its author has been censured for his 
too copious and unacknowledged extracts from ante- 
cedent writers, such as Seneca, V. Maximus, and 
Aulus Gellius, though it is unjust to condemn him 
as a mere plagiarist on that account, as his own 

a Florished towards the close of the 4th centm-v . 



178 LITERARY HISTORY. 

words, employed in speaking of the Saturnalia, 
ought to be considered.* He could not, in fact, ex- 
press himself more clearly to preclude the charge of 
plagiarism. 

The poets of this age, however, do not merit equal 
censure with the prose writers. Avienus and Clau- 
dian deserve a much higher credit for their verses 
than the greater part of those who wrote prose at 
that time do for their lines. R. F. Avienus was 
born, according to the best founded opinion, in Italy, 
while it is unquestionable at least, that he long resi- 
ded in that country, and composed his works at 
Rome. These are sufficiently numerous, including 
in their list a translation of the Phenomena of 
Aratus into Latin verse, besides another, in heroic 
measure, of the description of the earth by Dionysius 
Alexandrinus. Forty-two fables, as well as many 
other compositions of this author yet extant, are 
mentioned by Tiraboschi, and prove that Avienus, 
when placed in comparison with the prose writers 
of that time, is entitled at least to be considered no 
contemptible author. 

Claudian was an Egyptian by birth, but made a 
long residence in Italy and Rome, as we gather 



* Nee mihi vitio Veritas, si res, quas ex lectione varia mutuabor, 
ipsis saepe verbis, quibus ab ipsis auctoribus enarratae sunt, explica- 
bo Prooem. lib. i. 



HISTORY. 170 

from his own verses. Stilico, the celebrated 
general, who has been elsewhere spoken of, was the 
great Mecaenas to Claudian, who dedicates no lese 
than three books of verse to the paneygric of his 
patron. He displays a lively talent and great 
warmth of fancy, but abandons himself, like Statins 
and Lucan, too readily to the impulses of his fire. 
His pieces are generally characterised by the lofti- 
ness of the flight with which they commence, but 
his muses' wings are soon fatigued, it falls to the 
ground, and is there left to a very humble crawl. 

The disorder and confusion prevalent in the em- 
pire appears to have been communicated even to its 
historians, as not one of them has here left us any 
thing which can be styled either clear, exact, or of 
research. A slight sketch may, however, be given 
of those who, either born or resident in Italy, em- 
ployed themselves on any thing relative to the 
history of their own or the remoter times. Sextus 
Aurelius Victor has handed to us a brief compen- 
dium of the lives of the Roman emperors, from the 
epoch of Augustus down to the reign of Constans. 
Victor was a native of Africa, but lived and produ- 
ced his works in Italy, where the highest dignities 
were conferred upon him by the emperors, and at 
Rome he held the office of prefect. Under his name 
we have likewise a short work entitled Origo Genti* 
Romanae. A cotemporary of his was Eutropius, 



180 LITERARY HISTORY. 

who has left a compendium or abridgement of Ro- 
man history, from the foundation of the city till the 
reign of the emperor Valens, to whom the work is 
dedicated. In style he is equally uncultivated with 
Aurelius Victor, and the other writers of the age. 
To the compendium made by Eutropius, ought to 
be added that of Sextus Rufus, or, as he is some- 
times named, Rufus Festus, on the Victories and 
Provinces of the Roman People, and dedicated to 
the emperor, Valentinian II. He held the rank of 
Proconsul in Asia, and Trent was his native country. 
Ammianus Marcellinus, however, ranks the first 
and most celebrated among the Latin historians of 
that age. As Antioch was his birth-place he belongs 
not to Italy unless through the residence he made 
there and in Rome, where he compiled his history. 
Commencing with the reign of Nero he had carried 
it down to the death of Valens, and divided its con- 
tents into thirty-one books, the first thirteen of which 
are, however, entirely lost, and what remains only 
embraces the period included between 353 and 378. 
a.d. in the latter of which dates Valentian perished. 
The history of Marcellinus, as to accuracy, exact- 
ness, and just discernment, is one of the best we 
possess, though vitiated by a rough and unhappy 
style, and rendered sometimes fatiguing to the 
reader through the introduction of unnecessary 
digressions. 



JURISPRUDENCE. 181 

Of the philosophic studies of that day but very 
little can be said, as these, though florishing in 
Alexandria and Athens, at Rome only retroceded 
daily in decline. Palladius alone, a writer on agri- 
culture, has left us fourteen books on that subject, 
the last of them composed in elegiac verse, and in a 
style not altogether barbarous or rude. 

Many of the emperors had promulgated useful 
laws relative to the exercise of the medical art, and 
confirmed to its professors those honors and rights 
of exemption formerly conceded them ; but even 
under these circumstances neither Rome nor all 
Italy produced, within this space of time, one physi- 
cian whose fame has descended to posterity, or of 
whom any honourable monument has been pre- 
served. 

Jurisprudence, perhaps, stood alone exempt from 
the general neglect under which the other sciences 
lay in Rome ; and the concourse of strangers who 
flocked from every part to apply themselves to its 
study there was very great. The prohibition, by im- 
- perial authority, against the institution of schools 
of law in any other part of the empire, excepting 
Constantinople and Beirout in Syria alone, occa- 
sioned tins effect, as it left Rome the only seat of 
such studies throughout the whole extent of the 
western empire. In spite, however, of the very 
favorable circumstances under which they lay in 



182 LITERARY HISTORY. 

this respect, neither Italy nor its capital appear to 
have produced, at that time, one jurisconsult of cele- 
brity, even a fragment of whose works has been 
preserved. The cause of the abandonment which 
so noble a study experienced in Italy ought, in great 
part, to be ascribed to the immense multitude of 
laws published at different intervals by the empe- 
rors, and multiplied to such an extent that Euna- 
pius* calls them " a load for many camels." Their 
study thence becoming a work of intolerable fatigue ; 
it is not astonishing that few should have possessed 
courage enough to undertake it. The view of the 
disorder thus reigning in the laws induced the em- 
peror Theodosius II. who reigned in the east, to 
promulgate, in a.d. 438, that code of laws deno- 
minated, from his name, The Theodosian. This 
code, formed by a selection of the most useful and 
necessary found in the body of the laws previously 
published, reduced them not only in number, but 
arranged them in a better method. But although 
the Theodosian code was in force throughout the 
western empire, until the publication of that of Jus- 
tinian, the merit of the work is entirely due to the 
jurisconsults of Constantinople. 

As in the preceding ages the arts had retrograded 



In Vita Aedesii. 



FINE ARTS. 183 

equally with the sciences to decay, so in this of 
which we now speak, both held an equal pace in the 
inarch of their decline. They had not, however, yet 
totally abandoned Italy. The custom of raising 
statues to the names of the great still continued very 
frequent even at this period, a proof that art was 
yet held in esteem, when one branch at least of its 
productions were in demand, and considered hono- 
rary of those to whom dedicated. Those monu- 
ments of art which the course of preceding centuries 
had raised in Rome, when united to the public as well 
as private buildings, which stood wonderful in number 
as in style, were sufficient to strike the mind of 
every spectator with wonder and amaze. But the 
invasions by the barbarian nations, accompanied by 
the sackings and devastation they carried with them 
into Rome, too probably occasioned the demolition of 
obelisks, triumphal arches, and other monuments of 
Roman grandeur, some of which, brought again to 
light in modern times, have been re-erected in a 
style of equal magnificence. Neither was the art 
of painting altogether neglected at that period, and 
works in mosaic w r ere still common, though even 
they prove that this art was miserably decaying 
every day. 

Such was the origin and such were the progress 
and vicissitudes of the sciences and letters in Italy 
during the period we have now run over until the 



184 LITERARY HISTORY. 

final termination of the Roman empire in the west 
in 476 a.d. Various barbarian nations had already 
invaded and taken possession of all its provinces, 
while in Italy arose the new kingdom of the Goths, 
which existed for many years, until the expulsion of 
that people by the arms of the emperor Justinian, 
though the invasion of the Lombards unhappily next 
succeeded. Under the dominion of the Goths, how- 
ever, literature and the sciences appeared to have 
reassumed animation in Italy, and peculiarly so 
under Theodoric the Great ; but the reign of the 
Lombards, followed by that of the kings and empe- 
rors of Italy, witnessed their utter decline, while 
that country, fallen into a state of barbarism and 
rudeness, remained plunged for several ages in the 
profoundest ignorance. The twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries alone beheld some gleams of that light 
destined to attain such a strength and splendor 
in those which followed, and it was then that the 
Italian language arose and made itself illustrious, 
a language in elegance and beauty surpassed only 
by that of ancient Greece. The fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries again exhibit Italian literature 
arrived at a still happier point of prosperity and 
splendor, and in the ages that followed brought to 
the highest rank of honor equally in the deeper as 
in the lighter branches of literature and science, 
while Italian genius stood an object of astonishment 



185 

and emulation to other nations. Europe, which had 
hitherto lain inveloped in the densest shades of 
ignorance, now received from Italy, as its instruc- 
tress, the love of the useful sciences, alongst with 
models for imitation, and, in emulation with the 
country whence they had sprung, its literature and 
sciences arose to the proudest height of splendor and 
of glory. 






SECTION IX. 

THE LITERATURE OF ITALY, UNDER THE DOMINION OF THE 
GOTHS, AND UNTIL THE FORMATION OF THE (ilOI 

ITALIAN 

Italy having finally fallen under the dominion 
those barbarians, by whose irruptions it had pre- 
viously been so often desolated, now presented in 
itself a spectacle sufficiently mournful. It was com- 
pelled to yield to the yoke of sovereigns, at once 
rude, ignorant, and ferocious. It may be thence 
conceived in what condition Italian literature could 
1st under the rule of princes, whose ignorance ex- 
tended even to its name, and whose 
the utter exclusion < s. extended only 

the arts of war and a savage military prowess. 
Under the dominion of the first Gothic kings, how- 

I not so unhappy in 
Jy as might have been ipated; an assertion 

lich the succeeding section may ser on- 

firm. 



KRAL HISTORY. 



Odoaeer was the founder of the kingdom of the 
Goths in Italy. He introduced, however, no change 
nor innovation into the form of government and admi- 
nistration, but permitted every thing to remain as it 
had lain under the Roman usages and laws, the ma- 
racies and public charges, retaining their previous 
names, and possessed of the same powers and jurisdic- 
tions as they previously had enjoyed. The invasion of 
Italy by Theodoric, another Gothic king, however, 
followed, and Odoaeer, after a struggle of four years" 
duration, was deprived not only of his kingdom but 
of life, by the hands of his opponent, who thence 
remained sole and undisturbed lord and sovereign of 
Italy. But even Theodoric voluntarily placed him- 
self under the Roman laws, and confirmed to the 
former magistrates the exercise of their wonted 
authority. His reign proved on every account 
memorable as well as glorious, and entitled to the 
highest eulogy. His personal worth and sound 
sense, united to the judicious choice of minis* 
he had the ability to make, not only assisted to 
restore Italy from the burden of those very heavy 
calamities which past events had occasioned, but to 
re-exalt it even to a higher condition of prosperity and 



188 LITERARY HISTORY. 

grandeur ; while, in the knowledge of the true art 
of government, he rivalled the most eminent among 
sovereigns. All the principal officials of the king- 
dom, as well as his own ministers, were selected 
from his Italian subjects, nor were his own country- 
men left in charge of any department of administra- 
tion, with the exception of t that belonging to mili- 
tary affairs. Although uneducated and unlearned 
enough as to be unable to form even his own name, 
he extended a munificent protection to letters, and 
conferred upon the learned the very highest ho- 
nors. 

The pioneer to the rest in this walk, was the 
celebrated Cassiodorus, a to whom Theodoric had 
confided the important charge of writing out or dic- 
tating in his name, all the royal letters and sove- 
reign edicts ; the favor of his prince also promoted 
the man of letters to other conspicuous functions in 
the state, Cassiodorus happily availed himself of 
the friendship of his sovereign, to instil into his mind 
those sentiments of esteem for the study of the fine 
arts, and respect for the learned, which could not 
otherwise have existed from the circumstances of 
his barbarous education. Cassiodorus was the author 
of several works, enumerated at length by Tira- 



a Born at Scyllacium, in Magna Graecia, about a.d. 480. 



ELOQUENCE. 189 

bosclii,* and among those were twelve books, rela- 
tive to the history of the Goths ; these works are, 
however, altogether perished, with the exception of 
twelve books, comprising all the letters written du- 
ring the period of his ministry, and they form a 
valuable addition to the history of those times. They 
display at the same time the excellence and worth 
which characterised Cassiodorus, by ever represent- 
ing him to us as a minister equally solicitous for the 
honor and reputation of the sovereign, as for the 
felicity and prosperity of the subject. In style they 
also possess a harmony and form of expression, so 
peculiarly their own, that Tiraboschi considers it 
best defined by the appellation of a barbarous ele- 
gance. 

Saint Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia, has bequeathed 
to us copious monuments of his studies in eloquence, 
no less than in poetry, as distinctly noticed by Ti- 
raboschi, but his adoption of a style at once intri- 
cate, harsh, and unrefined, renders it frequently a 
matter of difficulty to comprehend his meaning. 
Tiraboschi, in addition, gives the names of many 
other writers of that age, highly eulogised by their 
cotemporaries, but whose works no longer exist. 
Panegyric was, however, at that time too cheaply 
acquired, and seems to have been lavished without 

* Vol. v. c. l. 



190 LITERARY HISTORY. 

discretion. It appears, however, that those alluded 
to were all men of honorable birth, as well as ele- 
vated rank, and though the praises heaped upon 
them were of an exaggerated character, they evi- 
dence at least that eloquence stood in high esteem 
during the prosperous times of Theodoric, and formed 
an object of ardent study to the most noble and 
illustrious even. It is, however, to be confessed, that 
should the qualities of that eloquence and style pos- 
sessed by those persons have been only on a level 
with those of St. Ennodius, the loss of their works 
is but little to be regretted ; and a similar remark 
may be extended to the poets of that period. Elo- 
quence and poetry, though cultivated thus with 
considerable ardor, had but very partial success, 
while history lay almost utterly forgotten. Except- 
ing the lost work of Cassiodorus on the history of 
the Goths, scarcely any thing worthy of notice in 
tins class has been handed down by the Italian 
authors of that time. The only one entitled to 
mention, in fact, is Jornandes,* from whom we 
have a history of the Goths, but forming, in fact, 
only a compendium of the preceding and more ample 
work of Cassiodorus on the like subject. 

Philosophy had now lain for several centuries 



* Or sometimes named Jordanus, — produced his History of the 
Goths about 550 a.d. 



PHILOSOPHY. 191 

almost forgotten by the Roman-, as, from the epoch 
of the deaths of Seneca and Pliny the elder, scarcely 
a -ingle author had dedicated himself to the illus- 
tration of any of its branches. But under the reign 
of the Gothic kings, a philosopher as illustrious by 
his birth and rank as distinguished for his learning, 
stood forward in its service. This was the cele- 
brated Severinus Boethius, a one of the most eminent 
personages of that age. and on whom the very highest 
terms of panegyric have been lavished, equally by 
all the writers on ecclesiastical as on profane history. 
Among the epistles by St. Ennodius, there are some 
addressed to Boethius, in one of which he asserts, 
that the latter had united in himself the eloquence 
both of Cicero and Demosthenes, while that, in his 
study to imitate the ancient orators of celebrity, he 
had succeeded in surpassing them. But the encomi- 
ums bestowed on the philosopher, in a letter addres- 
sed to him by Cassiodorus, through the command of 
Theodoric. are even stronger than those, and it enu- 
merates the many productions of his pen alongst with 
those of the most celebrated among the Greek phi- 
losophers which it had introduced to Latin literature. 
His Consolations of Philosophy is, however, en- 
titled to the foremost place among all the works of 



a Born towards the conclusion of the fifth century, either at 
Rome or Milan. 



192 LITERARY HISTORY. 

Boethius. Composed during the period that its 
author lay in a prison, he introduces, in mixed 
prose and verse, that species of philosophy which he 
deemed best adapted to afford consolation under 
misfortune. There have been persons enthusiastic 
enough in their admiration of this work to place it in 
comparison with those of Cicero and Virgil, but a 
very wide difference must be evident to every one 
possessing any experience in the character of the 
Latin style.* 

The words of Valesianus,-f" who appears to have 
been a cotemporary writer, and likewise those of 
the historian Procopius,J who also wrote in the 
same age, have left us a narrative of the impri- 
sonment and unhappy death of the illustrious 
Boethius. He and Simmacus, his father-in-law, 
both of distinguished birth and consular rank, stood 
foremost of Roman senators for learning and virtues. 
They were surpassed by none in their attainments 
in philosophy, by none in their devotion to the prin- 
ciples of justice and public interests, and by none in 
their liberality towards the poorer citizens. But that 
malignity and envy which have, throughout all 

* The Count G. Mazzuchelli, in his excellent work, The AutJwrs 
of Italy, has amply discussed this, as well as the other works of 
Boethius Barbacovi. 

•j- Ad calcem Ammian. Marcel, edit. Vales. 

X De Bello Goth, lib. i. c. 1. 



LITERARY HISTORY. 193 

ages, followed virtue and merit with persecution, 

conspired against both, and produced an accusation 
against them of having intrigued with the Greek 
emperor Justinian against Theodoric. Upon the faith 
of a false testimony, then, they were condemned to die. 
Boethius, after having suffered a protracted impri- 
sonment, and composed, during its course, his work 
on Co7isolatiu)i, was finally put to death, under 
circumstances of atrocious cruelty. In the follow- 
ing year, Symmacus also was destroyed ; and in that 
which succeeded, Theodoric died, branded with the 
eternal infamy of their deaths. For whatever jus- 
tification may be afforded him by the facts of the 
false accusations given, there can be none for the cruel 
circumstances attending the murder of Boethius, a 
cruelty winch has left an indelible stain on the name 
and celebrity of Theodoric. 

The times now spoken of have left nothing relative 
to the medical art at all worthy of notice. We 
neither find any Latin writer to illustrate it by his 
writings, nor any physician in Italy to acquire cele- 
brity by his profession. The art was not, however, 
overlooked by the Gothic kings, but, on the con- 
trary, encouraged. Theodoric, for his part, appears 
to have instituted an office equal in authority to that 
of president-general over the physicians and medical 
profession ; and the institution is made mention of 
in the letters of Cassiodorus. 



194 LITERARY HISTORY. 

It has been already stated, that neither Odoacer 
nor Theodoric introduced any innovation into the 
forms of jurisprudence. Their successors, likewise, 
maintained a similar policy. They were well aware, 
that to preserve a tranquil sovereignty over a people 
subjugated by the force of arms, it was necessary to 
give them the least possible annoyance, as well as 
to allow them to retain their ancient usages and 
laws. For those reasons they permitted their sub- 
jects to be regulated by their own laws, and to 
enjoy their national magistrates and judges. It 
is, indeed, more than probable that there were many 
at Rome even in those times who professed the 
legal sciences, though no notice of any jurisconsult 
of celebrity has descended to us. 

The same favor and munificent liberality with 
which Theodoric fostered literature and the sciences 
were extended by him equally to the fine arts and 
their cultivators. Cassiodorus had the art of instil- 
ling, in so wise a method, an esteem and taste for 
them into the mind of that monarch, that it became 
to liim a principal object of occupation through the 
course of his tranquil and memorable reign. The 
most prominent feature in those letters, dictated by 
Cassiodorus for his sovereign, is an anxiety for the 
restoration and preservation of the ancient fabrics 
and most celebrated monuments adorning Rome. 
Nor did the capital alone engToss the liberality of 



LITERARY HISTORY. 19.3 

Theodoric, as other cities participated there, whilst 
it added new ornaments to Italy, and occasioned the 
elevation of regal and magnificent edifices in various 
parts. 

The reign of the Goths in Italy endured for a 
space of sixty years, but the concluding part of that 
period proved as unhappy as the earlier portion had 
been prosperous and fortunate. Justinian, who, 
under the title of Roman Emperor, governed the 
Eastern empire, having conceived the design of 
wresting Italy from the dominion of the Goths, and 
re-uniting it to the empire, confided the undertaking 
to the hands of the celebrated Belisarius, who had 
shortly previous effected the conquest of Africa, and 
annexed it to the dominions of his master. This 
great general, then, entering Italy, obtained, through 
his military talents, possession of a part of it, and 
carried Rome and Ravenna. Some unjust suspi- 
cions, however, occasioning the recal of Belisarius, 
the celebrated eunuch, Narses, substituted in the 
command, closed the war with the total overthrow 
of the kingdom of the Goths. As it was a contest, 
however, which endured for upwards of eighteen 
years, its effects were above every other disastrous 
to Italy, and principally on account of the number- 
less acts of robbery and extortion committed by the 
soldiery of Justinian. On conclusion of the war, 
Narses remained governor of Italy in name of the 



106 



LITERARY HISTORY. 



Greek emperor, and succeeded in restoring the coun- 
try from the burden of its past calamities ; but his 
government lasted only sixteen years, and, at its 
conclusion, other barbarous nations speedily appeared : 
these were, the Lombards, who now effected the 
establishment of a new kingdom in Italy. 

The ages which have hitherto been spoken of, 
though subjected occasionally to great and general 
calamities, and, consequently, but unfavorable to the 
prosperity of Italian literature, ever continued, how- 
ever, to present at intervals, even in their darkest 
periods, some gleams of light, and to afford some 
topic connected with our argument, agreeable to 
dwell upon; but the times at which we are now 
arrived, assume a very different aspect from their 
antecedent. In a.d. 567, on the death of the illus- 
trious Narses, the Patrician, Flavins Longinus, being 
appointed to the vacant government of Italy, in name 
of the Greek emperor, fixed his residence at Ravenna, 
and first assumed the title of Exarch. The follow- 
ing year, 568, however, witnessed the descent of 
another barbarous nation, from Pannonia, to invade 
the unhappy and already desolated Italy. These 
were the Lombards, who, under the command of 
Alboinus their king, threw themselves on that part 
of the countrv which has since received the name of 
Lombardy from its invaders, and speedily separated 
it from the empire ; while such, in fact, was the con- 



LITERARY HISTORY. U>7 

fidence of conquest with which that people direr 
its march towards Italy, that even the women and 
children, along with as much property as was pos- 
sessed, accompanied its advance. Venice was the 
first seizure, and Alboinus, prosecuting his underta- 
king, after the occupation of all the neighbouring 
cities, was crowned at Milan, in 569. Proceeding 
next to overrun almost every part of Tuscany, as 
well as a large portion of Umbria, and the Duchy 
of Berevento, he finally rendered himself master of 
Pavia, after a siege of three years' duration, and 
fixed there the seat of his newly-founded king- 
dom, as his successors also continued to do. Al- 
boinus having perished in a conspiracy, Clephis was 
elected for a successor, but his reign existed 
only three years, and, upon his death, the leading 
Lombard officials substituted an aristocratic or mixed 
form of government to the monarchic, dividing 
their kingdom at the same time into thirty-six sepa- 
rate duchies, each principal city and province having 
a petty prince or duke assigned to itself. This 
species of interregnum continued for ten years, but 
at the expiry of that period, the necessity of a com- 
mon defence against the Franks, who now threat- 
ened to effect a formidable descent into Italy, com- 
pelled the Lombards to elect a sovereign in the 
person of the son to their former monarch, who 
ascended the throne in 584. It is unnecessary, 



198 LITERARY HISTORY. 

however, to narrate the varied vicissitudes of the 
foreign and external wars, as well as other events, 
in which the Lombard kingdom found itself in- 
volved, as the literature of that period only need be 
noticed. It now lay indeed almost utterly neglected, 
and the causes of this neglect are apparent enough 
in the long continued sanguinary wars that the 
Lombard reign introduced to Italy, and also in the 
native habits and dispositions of that people, as 
these necessarily contributed to throw an universal 
tone of ignorance throughout the whole extent of 
Italy. 

The long protracted struggle betwixt the Greeks 
and Goths had already occasioned sufficient desola- 
tion to that unhappy country, when the Lombard 
invasion arrived to complete it. A barbarous and 
ferocious nation descending into Italy, as it may be 
expressed, to satiate its hunger, of course accompa- 
nied its progress with every species of devastation ; 
an age equally unhappy as this then would of course 
neither produce nor preserve any relish for the sci- 
ences and letters. 

The habits and dispositions of the Lombard 
people have then been asserted as concurring to ba- 
nish almost utterly every species of literature from 
Italy. Born among, and trained from infancy to 
arms, the Lombards were scarce acquainted even 



LITERARY HISTORY. 1 90 

with the existence of the sciences and letters, whi 
it is certain that not a single proof eziflU cither of 

any in the list of their kings having cultivated liter- 
ature, or ever hairing granted it the slightest encou- 
ragement or protection. There is found not the 
least mention of public schools, or professors of any 
description, within this era, and, in fact, the only 
writer who seems to have florished then is Paulas 
Varnefridus, generally called Diaconus, who pro- 
duced an historical work, entitled De Gestis Lon- 
gobardorum. In the composition of a part of tins 
history, he had under his eyes that of the Abbe 
Secondus of Trent, who had written a succinct ac- 
count of the Lombard people, brought down to his 
own times, and which, though now lost, had been 
studied by Diaconus, as it is several times quoted 
by him. This writer, who although rude and bar- 
barous in style, may be termed, notwithstanding, 
the most learned personage of his age, was born in 
Cividal del Friuli, a and of Lombard origin. Besides 
his history of that people, Tiraboschi enumerates 
the many other productions of Diaconus, but that 
was the work through which Ins name chiefly ac- 
quired its celebrity, and although neither a Caesar, 



- 1 The ancient Forum Julii. 



200 LITERARY HISTORY. 

Sallust, nor Livy in style, history stands consider- 
ably indebted to him, as his is one only such as the 
literary condition of that age could warrant us to 
expect, and valuable for many important details, 
which otherwise might have perished. 

Something may here be said relative to the 
government of the Lombard kings, and the condi- 
tion of Italy at that period. Their introduction of 
the native rudeness and rusticity of their country^ 
manners ; the effects produced by the calamities of 
past times ; those resulting also from the dominion 
acquired by a foreign nation, barbarous and unre- 
fined, all conspired to effect a banishment of the 
former habits of luxury, and the introduction of a 
rude and semibarbarous form of life among the 
people of Italy. The Lombards having defaced 
every feature in the ancient aspect of administra- 
tion, and established in every principal city a go- 
vernor, with the title of duke, overthrew all their 
previous municipal forms, and caused every idea of 
liberal government to disappear. They obliterated 
at the same time almost every vestige of learning, 
and the study of the sciences and letters fell to so 
low a value in those unhappy times, that whoever 
possessed some slight acquaintance with Latin gram- 
mar, enjoyed the reputation of a high literary cha- 
racter. 



LITERARY HISTORY. HO I 

The Lombards generally framed their laws in 
parliaments or diets convoked from among the num- 
ber of the Dukes and Barons of the kingdom, joined 
to the principal magistrates and judges. A code of 
Lombard laws still exists, in which, if perchance 
there are to be found some dictated by sound sense, 
and on the principles of reason, there are others as 
evidently unjust, barbarous, and absurd. The same 
penalty was attached to almost every crime, and that 
consisted solely in a pecuniary fine to the advantage 
of the offended party. Those, then, against whom 
accusation w r as brought, were required to demonstrate 
their innocence by the proof of fire or boiling water ; 
but if the accused passed not through the experiment 
unhurt, he was condemned as guilty. Processes in 
litigation or civil contests were decided by means of 
a personal or proxical appeal to arms by the litigant 
parties, that which proved victorious of course ob- 
taining a decision in its favor, however evident 
might be the injustice of its cause. These were 
absurdly enough termed divine judgements, as it 
became a principle of belief that the Deity mani- 
fested by these modes with which party the truth 
lay, although sufficient examples were afforded of 
the fallacy and absurdity of such methods of deci- 
sion, since many of those for whom they had pro- 
cured acquittal were afterwards proved guilty, while 
the opposite case as frequently occurred. The bar- 



202 LITERARY HISTORY. 

barism and irrationality of this form of law seems 
to have been recognised even by one of the Lom- 
bard kings, from a passage in one of his laws.* 

It is true, however, that the Lombards, either 
from habits of association with the Italians, or the 
influence of their climate, gradually parted with a 
portion of their native ferocity, and found upright 
and sagacious sovereigns, who ruled with justice and 
moderation. Among those, King Antharis, husband 
to the virtuous queen Theodelinda, merits particular 
panegyric, as equally do several of his successors. 
In spite of this, nevertheless, the devastation and 
evil effects consequent upon the Lombard occupation 
of Italy, were deep and severe enough even to ex- 
ceed belief, as Tiraboschi amply demonstrates.")* It 
closed, however, in 774, when Charlemagne, king 
of the Franks, entering Italy, at the earnest solici- 
tation of Pope Adrian I. and laying siege to Pavia, 
in which King Desiderius lay, soon found himself in 
possession of that city along with its monarch, and 
assumed the title of King of Italy, in addition to 
that of King of the Franks. 

A period extending to beyond two centuries had 



* Sed propter consuetudinem gentis nostra longobardicae legem 

impiam vetare noil possumus Luitprandus, leg. 65. ; lib. i. cap. 10. 

leg. 1. 

+ Vol. V. lib. 2. cap. 1. 



LITERARY HISTORY. 203 

now elapsed since Italy had possessed a sovereign 
devoting any attention to literature or the fine arts, 
but at the conclusion of that long interval it wit- 
nessed the appearance of a powerful monarch, who 
engaged in an ardent study of the sciences and 
letters, and strove, by every effort, to effect their 
revival, not less in Italy than throughout the re- 
maining extent of his vast dominions. This was 
the emperor Charlemagne, whom the majority of 
historians represent as a prince who entered Italy 
from France, already instructed in the sciences, and 
upon a view of the profound ignorance in which 
the former lay, invited thither learned men from 
foreign countries to assist in its mental improve- 
ment-; but Tiraboschi* establishes the position, that 
Charlemagne stood indebted to an Italian for the 
earliest application which he made to study. It is 
unquestionable, at least, that the first to which his 
attention would be directed should be that of gram- 
mar, as, without a knowledge of its principles, any 
attempt to acquire the sciences would have proved 
but ineffectual. In this study, then, he had for 
preceptor P. Diaconus of Pisa, as Eginhard, the 
ablest among the biographers of Charlemagne, whose 



* Vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 1. 



1204 LITERARY HISTORY. 

Chancellor, in fact, he was, expressly has affirmed.* 
This Diaconus resided in Pavia, and Charlemagne, 
who departed from France in 773, in his 30th year, 
ignorant even of the very rudiments of grammar, 
found the opportunity, in that city, of forming an 
acquaintance with the man to whom his mind became 
indebted for its earliest taste for letters. It is true, 
at the same time, that the merit of having instructed 
Charlemagne in the higher sciences, such ns rhetoric, 
dialectics, arithmetic, and particularly astronomy, 
is given to Alcuinus, an English monk ; but admit- 
ting that Charlemagne was indebted to that person 
for his progress in the more difficult sciences, he 
stood also so to the Italian just mentioned for his 
rise from the ignorance of letters which character- 
ised him during his residence in France. Tiraboschi 
proves, besides, that Charlemagne carried with him 
from Rome to that country professors of grammar 
and arithmetic, and directed them to propagate 



* In discenda grammatica Petrum Pisanum Diaconum audivit, 

cap. 25. A confirmation of this assertion may be found in the ancient 

writer of the Annals of Metz, published by Du Chesne, (Script. 

Hist. Francor, vol. iii.) and equally by the anonymous Saxon poet : — 

A sene Levita quodam cognomine Petro 

Curavit primo discere grammaticam. 

De Vita Caroli Th. lib. v. 



LITERARY HISTORY. 3 >.*> 

every where such studies, which then generally 
formed, in fact, the very highest scopes of ambition 
at which the students of literature aimed. But 
Charlemagne, distracted by the cares attendant 
upon the government of his vast dominions, and in- 
volved in unintermitting wars against the Saxons, 
subsequently relaxed in his efforts for the revival of 
the sciences and letters. Nor did any of his suc- 
cessors or descendants effect any thing in their 
favor, with the single exception of the Emperor 
Lothaire, who commanded, by a chapter or assembly, 
the institution of public schools in Pavia, Turin, 
Fermo, Verona, Vienna, and Cividal del Friuli, 
intended for the reception of scholars from all 
the other cities of the Italian kingdom; but no 
happy effects resulted from the establishment of 
those schools, nor did they at all avail to banish the 
generally prevailing ignorance. After the extinction 
of the Carlovigian race, and until the elevation of the 
emperor Otho I. in 991, the history of Italy, during 
the intermediate reigns, only presents an uninter- 
rupted narrative of discord and civil wars between 
the various pretenders to the throne, of factious 
struggles betwixt the petty princes and gran- 
dees of the kingdom, in which even the clergy 
took its share, in support of their several fa- 
vorite aspirants ; letters almost eradicated from the 
soil, in spite of the seminaries that have just been 



200 LITERARY HISTORY. 

mentioned, and manners become completely bar- 
barous. The civil or internal wars, the external 
contests with the neighbouring princes, the inva- 
sions by the Huns, and other calamities, with the 
devastation and misery that accompanied them, 
while they increased the desolation of unhappy Ita- 
ly, accelerated in an equal measure the utter decline 
of letters. There were branches of polite litera- 
ture, such as poetry, in particular, which still could 
boast, however, of some cultivators, and indeed the 
number of poets belonging to this age is much greater 
than the generally prevalent ignorance of that day 
could warrant us to expect, though it is to be con- 
fessed, at the same time, that their productions are 
such as cannot now be read without a smile, excited 
by the barbarism and rudeness of the authors. The 
historians, however, merit more consideration's they, 
although also rude and barbarous in style, have handed 
down important historical notices, acquainting us 
with the condition and vicissitudes of those ages, 
while the highest place among them is held by the 
celebrated P. Diaconus, of whom mention has been 
already made. Tiraboschi proceeds to notice other 
histories and chronicles, produced at that time by a 
certain priest, named Andrew, and one Erchem- 
pertus, besides many other writers, but the reader 
would not probably feel indebted for an enumeration 
of uninteresting, though useful compilators. Luit- 



LITERARY HISTORV. 207 

prandus, Bishop of Cremona, is the only writer of 
those times entitled to a more ample notice. He 
attended upon the court of King Berengerius, whose 
secretary he was, and by whom he was dispatched 
as ambassador to the Greek court. He has left us 
a recital of his journey to Constantinople, of the hon- 
orable reception he experienced, and the various 
objects he witnessed there ; but after a few years, 
whatever might be the cause, the bishop found the 
favor of his sovereign converted into dislike, and 
himself compelled to retire an exile into Germany. 
It was during this exile, however, that he composed 
his history of the events of his own times, in a work 
characterised by an elegance and refinement supe- 
rior to that shown by any among cotemporary 
historians, but at the same time more bitter and 
sarcastic in tone than suits a judicious or well-bred 
writer. 

What has hitherto been said illustrative of the 
unhappy position of Italian literature in its orna- 
mental branches during the eighth, ninth, and tenth 
centuries, will easily enable us to conclude that the 
graver sciences experienced no better fortune, as 
their proper study demands not only additional 
tranquillity, but increased exertion. In spite of 
those unfavorable circumstances, however, Gherbert, 
first archbishop of Rheims, afterwards of Ravenna, 
and who finally mounted the Papal throne under 



208 LITERARY HISTORY. 

the name of Silvester II., a man of more than ordi- 
nary talent and learning, zealous also for the general 
revival of literature, acquired celebrity. There 
scarcely was a science to which he did not direct 
his application, as, in addition to his more favorite 
study of mathematics, rhetoric, music, and medi- 
cine even are treated by him ; but it must be added, 
that this author, being a mathematician, was there- 
fore esteemed to be a magician, and one who pos- 
sessed familiar intercourse with the Evil One, 
so deep was the barbarism and ignorance of those 
gloomy ages. 

Relative to the medical art of this period, no 
notice exists either of physicians then illustrious in 
Italy or elsewhere, nor of any inventions effected in 
the profession ; neither does a single jurisconsult of 
established fame present himself. And the fine arts, 
though not totally abandoned, were left, through 
the unfortunate position of the times, and the ab- 
sence of motives necessary to stimulate and excite, 
in the hands of but rude and unhappy cultivators. 

Additional events of a most calamitous descrip- 
tion befell Italy, however, in the succeeding ages, 
and increased the amount of her misfortunes, be- 
sides throwing further obstacles to the study of the 
sciences and letters. The fatal and protracted 
struggle between the priesthood and the empire in- 
tervened, producing dreadful schisms in the church, 



LITERARY HISTORY. 209 

—elections of anti-popes — excommunications against 
excommunications — sanguinary contests "twixt the 
Guelpli or Papal and Ghibelline or anti-papal fac- 
tions, along with murderous and destructive war- 
fare between almost every separate city. The 
Italian cities having now shaken off all depend- 
ance upon the emperors, and assumed the form of 
free Republics, governed by their own magistrates 
and laws, the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, in his 
attempt to re-assert the imperial authority, excited 
those atrocious wars between himself and the free 
cities, united in a general league for the assertion 
of their liberties, which ended in his being forced 
to consent to the celebrated peace of Constance. 
But during the prolongation of such a frightful state 
of affairs, what attention could the arts or letters 
possibly hope to have directed to them ? * 



* It has been proposed to notice only profane studies here, to the 
exclusion of the sacred or theological, but there is one illustrious 
Italian who ought not to be passed over in silence, and this is St. 
Anselm, who florished about the middle of the eleventh century. 
He, in the midst of the universal ignorance of his age, has left us 
brilliant proofs of his profound learning. Without adverting to his 
theological works, we may remark upon those belonging to philoso- 
phic or metaphysical arguments, where the most abstruse questions 
on the existence, nature, and attributes of the Deity are so happily 
illustrated and discussed, that the most celebrated among modern 

philosophers have not disdained to borrow from that source Bar- 

bacovi. 



210 LITERARY HISTORY. 

Those branches of the Belles Lettres, such as Gram- 
mar, Eloquence, Poetry, and History, still afford, 
at the period which we have now reached, but very 
scanty materials for our subject, as those few to 
whom they were objects of study, have not trans- 
mitted such proofs of their genius or application as 
entitle them to fame as talented writers ; but as 
their efforts at least merit approbation, an honorable 
mention is consequently due to them. In Eloquence 
not one solitary example of any description is offered, 
and pleading in the Forum, or before the judges, 
had in fact fallen greatly into disuse. The fortune 
of Poetry was, however, less unhappy, since, if there 
existed not graceful and elegant poets in number, 
they were at least sufficiently large, and some in the 
list are to be considered as by no means barbarous 
versifiers. Tiraboschi enumerates many of them, 
and particularly comments upon the poetry of the 
monk, Alfanus, afterwards Archbishop of Salerno, 
towards the close of the eleventh century ; but, of 
the many whom he names, although their produc- 
tions were esteemed admirable at that day, the de- 
gree of merit due to them is but very slight. 



The Latin Language had hitherto been the only 
medium of poetic composition throughout Italy. 
The origin and progress of the formation of the 



LITERARY HISTORY. 211 

modern Italian Language has been investigated by 
Tiraboschi in the preface to his volume fifth. Several 
ages, utterly sterile and void of subject for the his- 
tory of the philosophic or mathematical sciences, 
have now been glanced over, without finding scarce 
a single name, belonging to Italy, entitled, with any 
justice, to the honorable and illustrious appellation 
of philosopher ; but now those sciences also com- 
mence to re-assume, at least in part, their ancient 
lustre, and their names cease to be, to the people of 
Italy, as barbarous and foreign as they had been for 
some ages past. 



The literary history of Italy has now been brought 
down to that epoch beyond which it has been here 
announced as not to pass. And hurried though the 
notice of its latter and darker portion has been, even 
for the limits of a compendium such as this, it has 
perhaps been as diffuse as ages such as those are 
entitled to receive. But the student who pursues 
the subject will find himself sufficiently repaid for 
whatever he may have felt uninteresting or unen- 
gaging in these concluding pages, by the study of 
that bright era in the literature of Italy, ushered in 
by the formation of its modern language, and which 
re-exalted that country, in some departments of 
literature at least, to an eminence that has never 
been surpassed. — Translator. 



INDEX. 



Adrian, 90 

Alaric, invasion of, 170 

Alboinus, King, 196 

Andres, Abbe, quoted 35, 53, 115, 

etal. 
Anselm, St., note on, 209 
Antonius, M. 42 
Antoninus, Emperor, 138 
Arts, state of the, 159, 183 
Arehitas, 4 
Archimedes. 4 
Asconius, Ped. 132 
Athene um, institution of, 132 
Attila. invasion of, 170 
Aurelius, Emperor, 139 
Aurelius, 146 
Augustus, 51, et al. 
Avienus, R. F. 178 

B 

Belisarius, 195 

Bentivoglio, Cardinal, note on, 97 

Boethius, 191 ; death of, 193 

Brutus, M. J. 22 

Button, quoted, 124 



| Caesar, works of, 27, 48 ; remarks on 
oratory of, 44 ; scientific works of 
and note on, 61, 62, et al. 
i Carneades, 1 8, et al. 
Cato the Censor, 20, 21 



i Capito. A. 129 

Cams. S. L. 25 

Catullus, C. V. 28 

Cassius, Lucius L. and his sect. 120 

Caracalla, 143 

Cassiodorus, 188 

Calpurnius, 149 

Caligula, 84 

Celsus, A. C. 69 

Censorinus, 151 

Charondas. 6 

Charlemagne, 202, 204 

Cicero quoted, 20, 49 ; poetry of. 
26 ; oratory of. 43 ; historical 
works of, 48 ; philosophical works 
of, 58, 60 ; remarks on and re- 
ligious opinions of, 63, 68 ; re- 
marks on oratory of. 81. 82. et al. 

Claudius, Emperor, 85 

Claudian, 178 

Claudius II. 146 

Cornelia, 41 

Commodus, Emperor, 141 

Constantine, 164 

Corax, 9 

Cordus, Cremuzius. 1 1 7 

Comedy, 8 

Crassus, L. 42 

Curtius, Q. 113 

D 

Demosthenes, remarks on, 44 
Diocletian, 147 



214 



INDEX. 



Diaconus, 199,204, 206 
Dicaearchus, 3 
Domitian, 89 

E 
Edict, perpetual, 130 
Eloquence, history of, 8, 40, 80, 

1 05 ; vitiation of, 45 ; epistolary, 

68. 
Empedocles, 3 
Ennodius, St. 189 
Ennius, 14 
Epicurean system, 26 
Epicharmus, 3, 8 
Etruscans the, in Introduction. 
Eutropius, 179 
Eusebeian Chronicle quoted, 24, et al. 

F 

Fine arts, 11,78,79, 135,137 
Floras, Annaeus, 117 
Flaccus, V.96 
Flaccus, Siculus, 153 
Frontinus, J. 126 
Fronto, C. 150 

G 
Gallus, C. 37 
Games, Capitoline, 87, 94 
Gallienus, Emperor, 1 45 
Galen, 154 
Germanicus, 92 
Gellius Aulus, 157 ; Noctes Atticae 

of, 158 
Genseric, 170 
Goths, invasion of, 1 70 
Gorgias, 9, et al. 
Gracchus, C. 41 
Greece, 23, et al. 
Grecia, Magna In Introduction, 

et al. 
Gratian, Emperor, 168 

H 

Heliogobalus, 142 
Heneccius, note on, 156, et al. 
History, Augustan, 151 
Historians, remarks upon, 111 
Historical writing, 21, 47 
Horace, 29, et al. 
Hortensius, Q. 42 ; annals of, 47 
Honorius, Emperor, 169 



Icetas, 2 

Italian cities, 209 



Jornandes, 190 

Jurisprudence, history, &c. of, 22, 

71, 154, 194, 181 
Jurisconsults, 1 2 8 
Julianus Salvius, 1 30 
Julian, Emperor, 166 
Justinus, 151 
Juvenal, 100, et al. 



Laelius, C. 17 

Labeo, A. 129 

Lactantius Firmianus, 163 

Lepidus, 20 

Livius, Andronicus, 14 

Livius or Livy, T. and his works, 
51,54 

Licinius, 148 

Libraries, history of, 75, 77, 133, 
135 

Lombards, invasion of the, 196 ; 
kingdom, 197 ; effects of their in- 
vasion, 198 ; their svstem of go- 
vernment, &c. 200-1202 

Lucilius, 24 

Lucan, 94 ; Pharsalia of, 95 

Lucullus, 75 

Luitprandus, 207 

Lysias, 9 

M 

Marchetti, A. note on, 26 

Martial, M. V. 100, et al. 

Marcellinus Ammianus, remarks of, 
157; historo of, 180 

Macrobius, A. T. 177 

Mazuchelli, Count, note on, 192 

Mennippus, 27 

Mecaenas, 30, et al. 

Medical art, progress of, 181 193 

Mimes, notice of, 102 

Minutius Felix, 162 

Moscus, 8 

Morgagni, Professor, note on, 70 

Musa, A. 69 

N 
Narses, 195 
Nevius, 14 
Nepos, C. 50, et al. 
Nero, 86, et al. 
Nerva, 89 
Nemesianus, 149 



INDEX. 



215 



o 

Ocellus, 3 
Odoacer, 174,187 
Oratory, progress of, 20 
Ovid, 37, et al. 



Panaetius, 17, 19 

Papinianus, 154 

Palladius, 181 

Pandects or Digests, notice of, 15G 

Pateiculus, C. V. 112 

Paulus Julianus, 156 

Petronius, A. 98 

Persius, A. Flaccus, 99 

Petus Traseus, 126 

Philosophy, *tudy of, 16, 57 

Plautus, 14 

Plinv the Younger and his works, 

108—111. 
Pliny the elder, and his works, 122 

—125 
Poetry, dramatic, 1 3, 24 •, pastoral 8 ; 

theatric 8 ; Latin 1 6 
Polybius, 17, et al. 
Pomponius, history of, 47 
Pollio, A. his library", 78 ; criticisms 

of, 81 
Propertius, A. 36 
Proculus and his sect, 130 
Provinces of Italy, literature of, 159 
Pythagorus 12 

Q 
Qumtilian, 107; remarks upon, 108, 

et al. 

R 
Rhetoricians, Latin, 74 
Ricimerus, 172 
Romans, poetrv of, 16 
Rufus, S. 180 

S 
Satire, 24 
Sallust, C. 49 
Scaevola, Q. M. 22, 72 
Sciences, the mathematical, 60 ; the 

medical 69, 127 
School, Pvthagorean, 1 ; Italic, 1 ; 

Eleatic, 3 
Schools of various cities, 161, 205 
Sect, the Stoical, 118 ; Ionic, 2 
Serenus, S. 149 
Seneca, tragedies of, 101 
Seneca the rhetor and his works, 106 



Seneca, L. A. character and w< 

119—122 
Severus Septimius, emperor, 142 
Severus Alex, emperor, 143 
Silicus Italieus, 97 
Simmacus Q. Aur. 175 
Sicily, (in introduction et al.) hi 

rians of, 1 1 
Silvester, Pope II. 208 
Statius, 90 ; poems of, 97 
Stesichorus, 6 
Suetonius C. T. 116 
Sulpitius S. Rufus, 72, 74 



Tacitus, and his works, 113, 116. 

Tacitus Claudius, emperor, 146 

Terentius or Terence, 14 

Terrason, note on, 72 

Thales, 2 

Theatre, Roman, 101 — 104 ; theatres 

of Sicily, 159 ; of Italy, 160 
Theodosius, emperor, 1 69 
Theodosian code, 182 
Theodoric, 1 87, et al. 
Theocrates, 8 

Thirty tyrants, period of the, 146 
Tiraboschi quoted in Introduction 

et al. 
Tiberius, 83 
Titus, 88 
Tisias, 9 
Timaeus, 3 
Trajan 89. 

U 
Ulpianus, A, 155 
Urbicus, A. 153 

V 
Varro, 27, 54, et al. 
Valerius Maximus, 112 
Varus, P. A. 74 
Valentinian, emperor, 166 
Vespasian, 87 
Virgil, P. M. 32. et al. ^Eneid of, 

36 
Vittorinus, M. 175 ; Victor, S. A. 179 
Vitruvius,M. Pollio, 60 



Xenophanes, 3. 



Zaleucus, 6 



X 



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